Author: Helen Roche

in Miniatures: A Reader in the History of Everyday Life, ed. Kate Ferris, Huw Halstead, Exeter (University of Exeter Press), 2025, pp. 54-65.

In spring 1936, teenage schoolboy Dick Hargreaves was given the chance to go on an all-expenses-paid exchange trip to Germany. But this was no ordinary school exchange – Hargreaves’ destination was Oranienstein, one of a system of new elite boarding schools known as Napolas. An accompanying essay demonstrates the ways in which this ego-document can help us understand the nature of dictatorship.Read more...

On 7 May 2025, the exhibition on which Helen has been collaborating with Brandenburg's State Centre for Civic Education (Brandenburgische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung) officially opened. The exhibition, which runs until 8 October, explores the history of the Napola in Potsdam, current site of the Brandenburg State Government, and draws extensively on Helen's research.Read more...

Helen has recently published a chapter in Miniatures: A Reader in the History of Everyday Life, entitled 'Diary of a Schoolboy in Nazi Germany', as well as publishing a review in the English Historical Review of Mary Fulbrook's monograph Bystander Society.Read more...

Helen has just been appointed as co-Editor-in-Chief of Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies. Having moved from Brill, the journal is being relaunched by Central European University Press, an imprint of Amsterdam University Press.Read more...

In 2024-5, Helen collaborated with Brandenburg's State Centre for Civic Education on an exhibition featuring the history of the Napola in Potsdam. The current site of the Centre, and the current State Government of Brandenburg, used to be the site of the Nazi elite-school in Potsdam. The Centre welcomed this opportunity to explore the contested history of the location. The exhibition will run until 8 October 2025 and is free to all members of the public.Read more...

Helen recently contributed to the latest series of the podcast 'Real Dictators', featuring the life and times of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. You can listen to the series on BBC Sounds here.Read more...

Despite the global importance of the gaming industry, and the centrality of video-games and contemporary boardgames as cultural artefacts in the modern world, historians beyond the sub-discipline of Historical Game Studies have often failed to consider games seriously as historical sources, while game-industry professionals do not necessarily consider explicit historical methodologies when designing games set in the past.Read more...

Helen and Dr. Ladan Cockshut have just been awarded Research Development funding from Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study for a project which will bring together academic historians and game developers to see what each group can learn from the other.Read more...

Review of T. Corey Brennan's The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 32 (1), Spring/Summer 2024, 177-91.

The fasces—the bundled axes and rods which symbolized power and punishment in ancient Rome—have often exerted a powerful hold on the Western imagination, long before their adoption by Mussolini led to their co-option for the term “fascist”, with all of its stark, unsavory, and brutal political connotations.Read more...

Review of Chiara Bonacchi, Heritage and Nationalism: Understanding Populism through Big Data (London: UCL Press, 2022), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 30 (3), September 2024, 837-8.

The politicization of the past has long been a key concern for archaeologists, historians, and heritage professionals. However, with the recent advent of social media, new opportunities to research the resonance of distant pasts in populist rhetoric now abound – if such sources can be harnessed appropriately.Read more...