Dr Tom Lawson 

Reader in Modern History 

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences  

Email:

Tom.Lawson@winchester.ac.uk  

Phone:

01962 827186 

Address:

Biography

I studied History at the University of York, before completing an MA at the University of Durham and then a PhD at the University of Southampton. I have been at Winchester since 2002.

N.B.: For the academic year 2011/12 I am on research leave (British Academy Mid Career Fellowship).

Expertise

Holocaust Studies

Publications

'We Remember? The Catholic Church and the Holocaust', Religion Compass Vol. 5, No 11, 2011, pp 675-84 (online publication; click here to access)

Edited with Thomas Kühne, The Holocaust and Local History (Vallentine Mitchell, 2011)

Debates on the Holocaust (Manchester University Press, 2010)

"I was following the lead of Jesus Christ': Christian anti-fascism in interwar Britain'. In: N. Copsey & A. Olechnowicz (eds) Varieties of Anti-Fascism (Routledge, 2009)

Edited with James Jordan, The Memory of the Holocaust in Australia (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008)

'Bishop Bell and the Trial of German War Criminals: a Moral History', Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 21, No 2, 2008. Reprinted in Andrew Chandler (ed.), The Church and Humanity: The Life and Work of George Bell, 1883 - 1958 (Ashgate, 2012)

‘Reconstructing Christendom: Survivors of the Shoah and Religious Rhetoric in Post-War Britain’. In: J. Dieter-Steinert, Beyond the Camps and Forced Labour (Secolo Verlag, 2008)

‘The Church of England and the German Past, Present and Future: A Case Study in the International Search for a Usable Past’. In: G. Schaffer and M. Riera (eds) The Lasting War: Society and Identity in Britain, France and Germany after 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

'The Free-Masonry of Sorrow? English National Identites and the Memorialisation of the Great War in Britain, 1919-31’, History and Memory, Vol. 20, No 1, 2008

'Shaping the Holocaust: Understanding the European Jewish Tragedy in Christian Discourse, 1945 - 2005’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 21, No 3, 2007

‘The Myth of the European Civil War’. In: R. Littlejohns and S. Soncini (eds), Myths of Europe (Rodopi, 2007)

The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism (Boydell and Brewer, 2006)

‘New (and Old) Perspectives on the Catholic Church and the Holocaust’, Holocaust Studies: a Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 11, No 3, 2005

‘Constructing a Christian History of Nazism 1945-49: Anglicanism and the Memory of the Holocaust’, History and Memory, Vol. 16, No 1, 2004

‘The Anglican Understanding of Nazism: Placing the Church of England’s Response to the Holocaust in Context’, Twentieth Century British History Vol. 14, No 2, 2003

‘Ideology in a Museum of Memory’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 4, No 2, 2003

Research Interests

My research interests have been primarily in Holocaust Studies. My first book, The Church of England and the Holocaust, also reflected an interest in modern religious history. Recently I have been particularly concerned with responses to and representations of the murder of Europe's Jews, and my history of Holocaust historiography, Debates on the Holocaust, was published in November 2010. I am also joint editor of the interdisciplinary journal Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

I am also interested in both British history more generally and the study of genocide. These interests come together in the project I am currently working on which looks at the role of the British in the destruction of the indigenous population of Tasmania and then the traces and memories of this genocide in British culture. I am also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Genocide Research.

I would be delighted to supervise PhD research in any of these areas, but particularly projects focussing on the memory and representation of the Holocaust, or the response, in its widest sense, of the Christian world to the persecution and murder of Europe's Jews.

Supervision of research students

• Kara Critchell – Holocaust Education in the UK (AHRC collaborative doctoral award student, jointly supervised with Holocaust Educational Trust)
• Mark Hobbs – Holocaust Denial in the UK
• Emily Stiles – Holocaust Museums in the UK and Poland
• Sue O’Brien – English Catholics and the Holocaust

Funding Awards and Professional Membership

Funding awards

AHRC Matched Leave – 2005/6
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, working with Holocaust Educational Trust – 2010
British Academy Mid Career Fellowship 2011/12

Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.