Matthew Jefferies

Additional Information

Teaching Areas:

At undergraduate level I have been responsible for the introduction and development of a wide range of course units in German History. These course units, which aim to provide students with a sound grounding in the major themes and events that have shaped modern Germany, while at the same time reflecting my personal research interests in cultural and social history, have added a new dimension to German Studies teaching. They have often been the subject of favourable comment in unit surveys.

Completed PhD Students include:

• Helen Vahramian, Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Armenians.
• Sven de Roode, The Perception of Europe and the European Union in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in Comparative Perspective (co-supervisor with Stefan Berger)
• Leif Jerram, Buildings, spaces, politics: Munich city council and the management of modernity, 1900-30 (co-supervisor with Stuart Jones)
• Stuart Cunningham, The Impact of German Unification on the Sorbs (main supervisor)
• David Charlston, An Analysis of Potential Ambiguities in Three Translations of Hegel's Phenomenology (co-supervisor with Maeve Olohan)
• Iryna Clark, The Conceptualisation of Civil Society in Belarusian Media Discourse (co-supervisor with Steve Hutchings)

I studied at the Universities of Sussex (B.A.) and Oxford (D. Phil), and have also spent time at the Universities of Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin-Humboldt and Warwick. While at Manchester I have also been a visiting lecturer at the Northern Institute of Technology Hamburg-Harburg and spent a semester at the Art Institute of Chicago. I have been a Fellow of the FVS Foundation (Hamburg) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn). I am a member of the German History Society and the German Studies Association. Until recently I was Assistant Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students in the Faculty of Humanities.

My main research interests lie in the history of Germany between 1870 and 1945, with particular reference to the relationship of art and politics; architecture, monuments, and town planning; lifestyle reform, naturism, conservation and the environment. I am currently working on popular photobooks in twentieth-century Germany.