Assistant Professor of History Brandon Bloch has been selected as a recipient of the 2026 Distinguished Teaching Award, one of UW–Madison’s highest honors for excellence in instruction, recognizing faculty who have made a significant impact in the classroom and on student learning since 1953. Professor Bloch’s work in modern European history, with a focus on …
In August 2025, Professor Brandon Bloch published his first book with Harvard University Press, entitled: Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy. The book tells the story of how German Protestant leaders embraced democratic ideals after World War II, while evading their church’s history of complicity with Nazism. You can find …
Alumnus Thomas McStay Adams (Ph.D. 1972) published his two-volume work Europe’s Welfare Traditions Since 1500: Reform Without End in February of this year. Description: Tracing the interwoven traditions of modern welfare states in Europe over five centuries, Thomas McStay Adams explores social welfare from Portugal, France, and Italy to Britain, Belgium and Germany. He shows …
Kate Jarvis (Ph.D. 2014) published a new book titled Politics in the Markets: Work, gender, and citizenship in revolutionary France at the University Press of Rennes. From the editor: This book mobilizes politics, economics and gender studies to examine in all its diversity the notion of citizenship founded by the Dames des Halles during the …
Professor Claire Taylor has been awarded an H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship. The Romnes Fellowship recognize faculty with exceptional research contributions within their first six years from promotion to a tenured position. The award is named in recognition of the late WARF trustees president H.I. Romnes. “My current main project is a feminist economic history …
Professor Karl Shoemaker has been selected by the College of Letters & Science as the recipient of the Robert F. and Sylvia T. Wagner Distinguished Faculty Award. Professor Shoemaker has received this award in recognition of his scholarship on medieval history and for support of his current and planned research for the next 5 years. …
Two teaching assistants from the Department of History, Ludwig Decke and Emma Wathen, have received a Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards. These awards recognize their excellence in teaching. Ludwig and Emma both received the Early Excellence in Teaching Award. Ludwig Decke is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History, specializing in the intersection of Jewish, …
The Department of History is excited to welcome three new faculty members – Khaled Esseissah, Michael Martoccio, and Jorell Meléndez-Badillo! Khaled Esseissah joins us as a historian of Islam, colonialism, slavery, race, and gender, with a focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century West Africa. Professor Esseissah is currently working on his book manuscript, Emancipation, Authority, and …
Professor Francine Hirsch is a historian of modern Europe with a specialization in Russia and the Soviet Union whose areas of expertise include comparative empires, the history of human rights, and Russian-American engagement. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began back in February of 2022, Professor Hirsch has continued to publish widely on the human rights …
Professor Francine Hirsch has co-authored a new op-ed for the Los Angeles Times titled “Lessons from the Soviets on how to hold Russia accountable for war crimes.” Evidence of Russian violence against Ukrainian citizens continues to emerge, and Professor Francine Hirsch suggests Ukraine needs “a dedicated state commission to collect, systematize and analyze evidence of …