Marcus Colla

Marcus Colla is an Associate Professor of Modern European Political History at the University of Bergen, Norway. Previously, he held a Mark Kaplanoff Research Fellowship in History at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. His work bridges twentieth-century Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and interdisciplinary themes like chronopolitics, memory studies, and architectural heritage.

His academic contributions include the 2022 monograph Prussia in the Historical Culture of the German Democratic Republic: Communists and Kings (Oxford University Press), analyses of preservationist practices in communist Eastern Europe, and ongoing collaborations on socialist urban spaces (with Paul Betts, forthcoming 2024). He has also published in journals such as Central European History, German History, and Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

His research trends focus on intersections between political ideology, historical memory, and temporal governance. Notable subtopics include the 1989 Revolutions, Prussian revival in GDR, architectural demolition as political act, and language policy under socialist regimes. He frequently contributes to public discourse on contemporary German and European politics through platforms like the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter.