Kristina Spohr

Biography

Professor Kristina Spohr is a specialist in the International History of Germany since 1945 and interested in questions of World Order, Diplomacy & Strategy and the practice of Applied History. She is now writing a global history on the Arctic.

Spohr is author of a dozen books or edited volumes. In 2019/21 her monograph Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World the World After 1989 (WilliamCollins, 2019 and Yale UP, 2020 ) was published together with the German edition Wendezeit: Die Neuordnung der Welt nach 1989 (Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 2019) and the Spanish Edition Después del Muro: La reconstrucción del mundo tras 1989 (Taurus, 2021). 

Wendezeit won the prestigious German award “Das politikwissenschaftliche Buch” 2020 for the best political science book published Germany. 

She also released the edited books The Arctic and World Order (Brookings Institution Press, 2020),  Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2019) and Exiting the Cold War, Entering a New World (Brookings Institution Press, 2019) with Daniel S. Hamilton. 

In 2016 appeared The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order (Oxford University Press, 2016) and its extended German edition Helmut Schmidt: Der Weltkanzler (Theiss, 2016). She also co-edited Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970-1990 (Oxford University Press, 2016) with David Reynolds.

Her previous books include Germany and the Baltic problem after the Cold War: The Development of a New Ostpolitik, 1989-2000 (London: Routledge, 2004; paperback 2013); Building Sustainable and Effective Capabilities: A Systemic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces (IOS Press, 2004 - as editor and contributor); Journal of Contemporary History Special Issue: At the Crossroads of Past and Present — ‘Contemporary’ History and the Historical Discipline (London: Sage – vol. 46, 3 (2011 - as co-editor and contributor).

Kristina Spohr has been inaugural holder of the German MFA and DAAD sponsored Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Chair at SAIS-Johns Hopkins in Washington DC (2018-2020), and is now a Senior Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins (2020-21). 

She studied at the University of East Anglia and Sciences Po, Paris towards her B.A., reading European Studies, Economics, and French. At Cambridge University she completed her M.Phil. in Historical Studies and Ph.D. in History at Peterhouse. Before joining the LSE, she worked as a Research Fellow in the Secretary General’s Private Office at NATO headquarters in Brussels and as a Junior Research Fellow in History at Christ's College, Cambridge.

External Awards include a Leverhulme Fellowship (2017) and generous grants from NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Germany), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD, Germany), the British Academy/Leverhulme Foundation, Journal of Contemporary History, CRASSH, and Cambridge University Mellon Fund.

Courses

Dr Kristina Spohr usually teaches the following courses:

At undergraduate level:

HY116: International History since 1890 (taught jointly with other members of the Department)

HY320: The Cold War Endgame, 1975-1991

At postgraduate level:

HY432: From Cold Warriors to Peacemakers: The End of the Cold War Era, 1979-1997

Publications

Dr Kristina Spohr's published books include:

• (as co-editor) The Arctic and World Order (Brookings Instution Press, 2020);

• (as co-editor) Exiting the Cold War, Entering a New World (Washington DC: Foreign Policy Institute/Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Brookings Instution Press, 2019);

• Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989 (London: HarperCollins, 2019; paperback 2020); German edition: Wendezeit Die Neuordnung der Welt nach 1989 (Berlin: DVA Verlag, 2019); US edition: Post Wall, Post Square How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World after 1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020); Spanish edition: Después del Muro: La Reconstrucción del Mundo después 1989 (Madrid: Editorial Taurus, 2020).

• (as co-editor) Open Door: NATO and Euro-Atlantic Security After the Cold War (Washington DC: Foreign Policy Institute/Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Brookings Instution Press, 2019);

• The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order (Oxford: OUP,  2016); German extended edition: Helmut Schmidt: Der Weltkanzler (Theiss, 2016)

• (as co-editor and contributor) Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970-1990 (Oxford: OUP, 2016)

• The Global Chancellor: Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of the International Order (Oxford: OUP,  2016);

• Helmut Schmidt: Der Weltkanzler (Theiss, 2016)

• (as co-editor and contributor) Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970-1990 (Oxford University Press, 2016)

• Germany and the Baltic problem after the Cold War: The Development of a New Ostpolitik, 1989-2000 (London: Routledge, 2004; paperback 2013);

• (as co-editor and contributor) JCH Special Issue: At the Crossroads of Past and Present — ‘Contemporary’ History and the Historical Discipline (London: Sage – vol. 46, 3, 2011);

• (as editor and contributor) Building Sustainable and Effective Capabilities: A Systemic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces (IOS Press, 2004)

Dr Spohr has written numerous scholarly articles, including:

• (with Kaarel Piirimäe) 'With or without Russia? The Boris, Bill and Helmut Bromance and the Harsh Realities of Securing Europe in the Post-Wall World, 1990-1994', Diplomacy and Statecraft, 33, 1 (2022), 158-193.

• 'Germany, America and the shaping of post-Cold War Europe’, Cold War History 15, 2 (2015);

• 'Helmut Schmidt and the shaping of Western security in the late 1970s: The Guadeloupe Summit of 1979', International History Review, 37, 1 (2015);

• 'Die deutsch-amerikanische Sicherheitspolitik in der Phase der Wiedervereinigung 1989/90 - or: A story of German International Emancipation through Political Unification', Historisch-Politische Mitteilungen Heft [Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik] 21/2014;

• 'Precluded or precedent-setting?: the "NATO enlargement question" in the triangular Bonn-Washington-Moscow diplomacy of 1990/1991', Journal of Cold War Studies, 14, 4 (2012);

• 'Conflict and cooperation in intra-alliance nuclear politics: Western Europe, America and the genesis of Nato's dual-track decision, 1977-1979',  Journal of Cold War Studies, 13, 2 (2011);

• 'Contemporary History in Europe: From mastering national pasts to the future of writing the World', Journal of Contemporary History 46, 3 (2011);

• 'Speaking truth to power: Contemporary History in the twenty-first century', Journal of Contemporary History 46, 3 (2011);

• ‘Germany and the politics of the neutron bomb, 1975-1979’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 21, 2 (2010);

• 'The Baltic Question in West German politics, 1949-1990', Journal of Baltic Studies 39, 2 (2007);

• 'National interests and the power of "language": West German diplomacy and the Conference on security and cooperation in Europe, 1972-1975', Journal of Strategic Studies29, 6 (2006);

• 'Between political rhetoric and realpolitik calculations: Western diplomacy and Baltic struggle for independence in the Cold War endgame', Cold War History 6, 1 (2006);

• (with Ryan Hendrickson) 'From the Baltic to the Black sea: Bush's NATO enlargement', White House Studies 4, 3 (2004);

• 'Naton laajentuminen 2002: "Kuka" ja "kuinka"?', Ulkopolitiikka 4 (2001)['Nato enlargement 2002: "Who" and "how"?', Journal of Foreign Affairs by the Finnish Institute of Intl. Affairs]

• 'German Unification: Between official history, academic scholarship, and political memoirs', Historical Journal 43, 3 (2000);

She has also contributed chapters to a number of edited volumes by:

• Leopoldo Nuti et al. (eds), The Euromissile Crisis and the End of the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 2015); 

• John Hiden, Vahur Made, David Smith (eds), The Baltic Question during the Cold War [Cold War History series] (Routledge, 2008; paperback 2009);

• Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann (eds), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Modern History [Routledge Guides to Historical Sources] (Routledge, 2008);

• Frederic Bozo et al. (eds), Europe and the End of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (Routledge, 2008);

• Robert Gerwarth (ed.), Twisted Paths: Europe, 1914-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2007; paperback 2008).

• Theresa Hitchens and Tomas Valasek (eds), Growing pains: the debate on the next round of Nato enlargement (CDI, 2002)

In preparation for her a co-edited volume Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970-1990 (OUP, 2016), she was awarded together with Prof. David Reynolds of Cambridge University a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant and funding by HEIF5, CRASSH, and the Cambridge University Mellon Fund of overall £21,000 to co-host a conference on the book-draft in Cambridge (22-23 September 2014) and a practitioners' seminar at the FCO in London (24 September 2014). 

In 2008 she was awarded grants amounting to £16,100 by the German Gerda Henkel Stiftung and the Journal of Contemporary History for a Joint LSE-King's College London conference entitled: 'At the Crossroads of Past and Present: "Contemporary" History and the Historical Discipline' (22-23 May 2009), which she organised with Prof. Jan Palmowski. 

She was the recipient of a €30,000 NATO grant in the summer of 2003 for an Advanced Research Workshop (NATO Science Programme/NATO Public Diplomacy Division), 'A Systemic Comparison of Professional and Conscript Forces', in December 2003 in Bratislava, Slovakia.