Month: November 2023

This year saw numerous media reports and broadcasts surrounding the publication of Helen's second book, The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas, in November 2021. Subsequent presentations included a guest lecture to pupils at Brentwood School and an in-person book-launch at Durham Castle. Helen's work on 'Sparta and the Nazis' was featured on The Ancients, a History Hit podcast, while her research on everyday life under Nazism was featured in four episodes of the Real Dictators podcast series on Hitler. Helen also contributed two articles entitled ‘Founding of the Napolas in Austria’ and ‘Bundeserziehungsanstalten / Staatserziehungsanstalten' to the online Encyclopedia of Contemporary Austrian History.Read more...

In 2023-2024, Helen has been appointed as a Christopherson-Knott Foundation Fellow at Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study, leading a Major Interdisciplinary Research Project as part of the Institute's programme for the academic year.Read more...

Helen's monograph The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas has now been released in an affordable paperback edition. To purchase a copy, you can visit the Oxford University Press website here.Read more...

Helen has recently been interviewed by Konstantinos Poulis of 'The Press Project', a news organisation based in Athens. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.Read more...

Presented at an international interdisciplinary symposium on Abusing Antiquity?, St Aidan’s College, University of Durham, 14 November 2023.Read more...

Thus far, Helen's second book The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas has received critical acclaim in ten different periodicals, ranging from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to Historical Studies in Education.Read more...

From September 2018 onwards, Helen collaborated with 72 Films as a consultant to two TV series on Nazi Germany, commissioned by the BBC (the first series, Rise of the Nazis, was screened on BBC 2 in 2019; the second, Dictators at War, was screened in February 2022).

Helen's work was also featured in two newspapers, Italian broadsheet Il Manifesto, which featured a full-page spread on the Brill Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany on 11 February 2018 (pictured), and the Indian Sunday Guardian, which published an article on 2 June 2018 entitled 'Childhood was Given a New Meaning in European Schools’, featuring Sparta's German Children.Read more...

In addition to media surrounding her lecture in Nordhausen, Helen was interviewed by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Cambridge News, and the Leipziger Volkszeitung (pictured) about her research on the Napolas. You can read the interview with Georgios Chatzoudis on the L.I.S.A. academic portal of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung here.

In addition, with Dr. Katharina Karcher, Helen co-organised a public film-screening and panel discussion, featuring Andreas Veiel’s Der Kick (2006), as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on 30 October 2015. The event was featured in the Festival of Ideas Speaker Spotlight Series, on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, and on the Cambridge University website.Read more...