News
Filming Trip to Germany Featured in the Local PressIn September 2024, Helen and film-maker Alan Fentiman undertook further filming for Helen's forthcoming documentary project on the history of the Napolas, focused on an archive of video interviews with former Napola-pupils. The film-crew's visit to Illenau was featured in the local press, including the Acherner Rench-Zeitung and the Badische Neueste Nachrichten –Read more...
In September 2024, Helen was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).Read more...
In August 2024, Helen has been invited to lecture at the University of San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile, hosted by Associate Professor in Modern European History, Dr. Jorge Dagnino. Her featured work will focus on the use of classical antiquity by the Italian Fascist and German National Socialist regimes.Read more...
New Publications on German Perceptions of ItalyHelen has recently published two new articles in the leading historical journals Ricerche Storiche and European History Quarterly; 'Italiani Cattiva Gente? Anti-Italian Stereotypes and the Obfuscation of War Crimes in German Perpetrator Narratives from the Italian Theatre of War' (with Dario Pasquini), and 'Nazi Elite-School Pupils as Youth Ambassadors Between Fascist Italy and the Third Reich'.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...
'The Third Reich's Elite Schools' Now Out in PaperbackHelen'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...
Interview with 'The Press Project'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...
Critical Acclaim for 'The Third Reich's Elite Schools'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...
New Article: 'The Biopolitics of Education in the Third Reich's "Special Schools" and "Elite Schools"'Helen's latest article, in collaboration with Lisa Pine, has now been published in The Historical Journal.
This article draws attention to education as a previously under-researched category of intervention in the history of modern biopolitics. The two case-studies cover both extremes of the spectrum of biological selection in education, from the negative, eugenic policies applied to supposedly ‘abnormal’ pupils at the so-called ‘special schools’, to the ‘positive’ biological selection of elite-school applicants at the Napolas.Read more...
New Publications on Testimonies and Nazi Boarding SchoolsTwo of Helen's essays have recently been published in edited collections from Palgrave Macmillan: 'Nazi Elite Boarding Schools and the Attempted Creation of a New Class System', in Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by Daniel Gerster and Felicity Jenz, and (with Achim Saupe) 'Testimonies in Historiography and Oral History', in The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture, edited by Sara Jones and Roger Woods.Read more...