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The Changing Face of Factory Regimes in South Asia: The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Workshops in Parel, Bombay, between 1879 and 1939

In 1879, Bombay (today Mumbai) saw the opening of the workshops of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company (GIPR) in Parel, the single largest industrial complex in the city at the time. On a site of roughly sixty acres it employed thousands of workers to maintain the locomotives and wagons that facilitated passenger travel and the exchange of mail between the centres of British rule on the subcontinent, as well as the transport of goods, especially cotton, to and from the city’s harbour. This circulation of people, information, and commodities was dependent on the smooth running of the trains, which in turn could only be assured if the staff employed at the workshops kept them in proper condition.1

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  1. Questions of maintenance have recently attracted more attention from historians, who acknowledge its centrality despite its invisibility to most observers. See e.g. Martin Meiske, ‘How to Commemorate Railways at 200? Unearthing Histories of Maintenance, Global Material Flows, and Colonialism’, German Historical Institute London Blog, 31 July 2025. []

The Book and its Missions: Past and Present as a Missionary Source for Global Bible Distribution

Introduction

My research project, entitled ‘A Global History of Bible Women, 1857–1916’, explores the history and agency of the Bible Woman as a missionary figure within world Christianity. Bible Women were local female evangelists employed to spread Christian teachings, distribute Bibles, and educate local women in literacy and Scripture. Initially emerging in London through the Protestant philanthropist and writer Ellen Henrietta Ranyard’s London Bible and Domestic Female Mission in 1857, the role rapidly expanded across Europe and the Global South through missionary networks, particularly those associated with the British and Foreign Bible Society. The project investigates the partnership between the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission and the Bible Society, focusing on the latter’s strategies for Bible distribution and the Bible Women’s motivations for engaging in this mission.

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The International Participation of Women in the Spanish Civil War: Searching for Traces in British Archives

Modern wars have global impacts. The war in Ukraine in particular has produced a large international solidarity movement. As a result, numerous international volunteers have travelled to Ukraine to take part in the war—including women. This fact has attracted a great deal of attention in international reporting since the beginning of the war. It still seems unusual to see women in the armed forces and in active warfare, especially when they are voluntarily participating in a war that does not directly affect them. This reveals gender stereotypes associated with war that go back many centuries: active men who protect their homeland, wives, and families vs passive women who dutifully care for their homes, children, and the wounded. As a result, women are denied political maturity, which has fatal consequences for their political role and rights of participation in times of war and peace alike.1

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  1. See e.g. Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining (eds.), A Companion to Women’s Military History (Leiden, 2012); Karen Hagemann, Stefan Dudink, and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 (New York, 2020); Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds.), Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2002); Ute Frevert, Die kasernierte Nation: Militärdienst und Zivilgesellschaft in Deutschland (Munich, 2001). []

Who’s Responsible? ‘Illegitimate’ Children in England and Wales

Throughout time, the concept of ‘the family’ has had a variety of—often politicized—meanings in different parts of the world. In twentieth-century Britain, the nuclear ‘male breadwinner family’ remained the ideal, consisting of a father who provides for the family and a mother who raises the children and takes care of the household.

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Rethinking Transnational and Devolved (Hi)stories: German-Speaking Refugees from National Socialism in Wales

Part 3: The Kindertransport: Child Refugees to Wales

This is the third in a three-part series of blog posts. See also part one and part two.

Refugees under the age of 18 did not need a visa. They could either travel on their parents’ visa or, after November 1938, they could be part of an organized rescue scheme such as the Kindertransport. But unless they managed to travel with their family, and their family received support in one way or another, the minors’ opportunities for resettling in the UK were dependent on the support of sponsors, whether individuals or charities. The UK government facilitated the visa waiver scheme now known as the Kindertransport, but it did not support child refugees financially or organizationally.

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Rethinking Transnational and Devolved (Hi)stories: German-Speaking Refugees from National Socialism in Wales

Part 2: Artist Refugees in Wales

This is the second in a three-part series of blog posts. See also part one.

In the early years after 1933, and possibly also immediately after March 1939, most refugees tried to settle near either established Jewish communities or refugee or diasporic communities. Those with political affiliations sought to live where other members of the same political parties or groupings had established themselves. For religious Jewish refugees, a synagogue and an active congregation were obviously important. This meant that many areas of Wales were considered less attractive than the large urban centres of England. Only a few prominent refugees resettled in Wales—many of them after the outbreak of the Second World War, when pressures in the urban centres became unbearable.

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Rethinking Transnational and Devolved (Hi)stories: German-Speaking Refugees from National Socialism in Wales

Part 1: Refugees’ Work, Visas, and Lives in Wales

This is the first in a three-part series of blog posts on the migration history of Wales. In the first, I will set the scene, outlining the conditions under which German-speaking refugees lived and worked in Wales during the Second World War. In the second and third, I will focus on the experiences of two specific sub-groups: artists and children.

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The View from the Island: Britain’s Perception of the Franco-German Brigade

Formed in 1989, the Franco-German Brigade was the first operational military unit established in peacetime Europe whose soldiers were recruited permanently from two nations and whose units were constantly under binational command. It became an important part of multinational military cooperation in Europe, with the political ambition of Germany and France being the driving force behind European security and defence policy.

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The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5

Murder on Jabalya Street

Multiple shots were fired at Walter Guinness, better known as Lord Moyne, as his car was parking at his residence on Jabalya Street in Cairo. Later that day, on 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East succumbed to his wounds. After a shoot-out with the Egyptian police, the two assassins, who had also killed Moyne’s driver, were apprehended. During their interrogation, they revealed their identity to be Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri, Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in their early twenties. They declared themselves members of the militant underground organization Lehi—the Hebrew acronym for Loḥamey Ḥerut Isra’el or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.

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Researching Religious Coloniality in East Africa: A Summer at the GHIL

Colonial Rule and Religious Resistance: My Research Project

My habilitation project, ‘“Arming the Natives and Inspiring Them to Resist German Influence”: Functions of Religion in Colonial Rule and Indigenous Resistance in German East Africa and Tanganyika (1885–1961)’, explores how religion functioned both as a tool of colonial domination and as a means of indigenous resistance. My research examines the period between 1885 and 1961, when German and British authorities used Christianity to establish their rule over present-day Tanzania.

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