News
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...
Helen's book The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas has recently been featured by boarding-school syndrome expert and therapist Piers Cross on his podcast 'An Evolving Man'. You can watch the podcast on Youtube here.Read more...
In 2022, three of Helen's book reviews were published in History. The Journal of the Historical Association, the Journal of Hellenic Studies and Germania: Anzeiger der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts.
On 13 May 2022, Helen's book The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas received an extremely favourable review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's leading broadsheets. The book has also received critical acclaim in the online journal Sehepunkte.Read more...
At 10pm on Wednesday 16 March, Helen will be speaking about her research on the Napolas on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking programme, with presenter Anne McElvoy, author Philip Oltermann, playwright Pamela Carter, and Germanist Karen Leeder. You can tune in here or on BBC Sounds.Read more...
Helen's work is now officially represented by Andrew Gordon of David Higham Associates, one of the world's leading literary agencies. Her third book, a popular history exploring the appeal of fascism for ordinary people in interwar Europe, is to be published by Head of Zeus in the UK and Commonwealth.Read more...
Following its publication in November 2021, Helen's book The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas received widespread media coverage in the national and international media - click here for more details. Since January, the book has been featured in further media interviews, including on BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking, WW2TV, at the Wiener Library, and on the Real Dictators and House of Modern History podcasts.Read more...
Since its publication on 11 November 2021, Helen's book The Third Reich's Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas has received widespread attention in the national and international media, including features in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and interviews on the BBC, Scottish and Irish National Radio.Read more...
Helen has just been interviewed about her new book, The Third Reich's Elite Schools, by BBC Radio Scotland's 'Good Morning Scotland' programme, and by Sean Moncrieff on NewsTalk's "The Moncrieff Show".Read more...