Dr Alexander Watson

Biography

I am a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. I was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, where I graduated with a first class BA (hons) degree in Modern History in 2000. I then worked for a year as a Research Assistant for Professor Niall Ferguson, before beginning my doctorate in the autumn of 2001. I spent two years researching in Germany, first in Hamburg and afterwards in Freiburg, and completed my doctorate at Balliol College, Oxford University, in 2005. I then moved to Clare Hall in Cambridge, where I spent five years as a Research Fellow.  I have been a College Research Associate at St. John’s since September 2010. 

Research

My research interests embrace the international history of armed conflict during the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on Britain and Central Europe during the First World War. I am currently engaged in a comparative study examining issues of national identity, minority integration and combat motivation among the Polish-speaking troops who served in the German and Austro-Hungarian armies between 1914-18. I am also extremely interested in human psychological resilience and the social and organisational mechanisms which encourage soldiers to fight.  My first book, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918, was awarded the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library’s Fraenkel Prize in 2006 and appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2008.

Teaching

I lecture and supervise BA and MA dissertations on the social, cultural, economic, military and political history of the First World War, the Second World War and the Habsburg Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I offer undergraduate supervisions on Paper 18 (European history since 1890).

Chief Publications

Monograph

  • Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 

Peer-reviewed Articles

  • ‘Bereaved and Aggrieved: Combat Motivation and the Ideology of Sacrifice in the First World War’, Historical Research, Vol. 83, No. 219 (February 2010), 146-64 (coauthored with Dr. Patrick Porter)
  • ‘Culture and Combat in the Western World, 1900-1945’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 2008), 529-46 (Historiographical Review)
  • ‘Junior Officership in the German Army during the Great War, 1914-1918’, War in History, Vol. 14, No. 4 (November 2007), 429-53
  • ‘Self-Deception and Survival: Mental Coping Strategies on the Western Front, 1914-18’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (April 2006), 247-68
  • ‘“For Kaiser and Reich”: the Identity and Fate of the German Volunteers, 1914-1918’, War in History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (January 2005), 44-74

Chapters in Edited Volumes

  • ‘Voluntary Enlistment in the Great War: a European Phenomenon?’, in C. Krüger and S. Levsen (eds.), War Volunteering in Modern Times (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010)

Shorter Essays

  • ‘Stabbed at the Front’, History Today, Vol. 58, Issue 11 (November 2008), 21-7
  • ‘Polscy zolnierze w armii niemieckiej podczas I Wojny Swiatowej – badanie motywacji bojowej’ [‘Polish Soldiers in the German Army during the First World War – a Study of Combat Motivation’], to be published in 2010 in Od armii komputowej do narodowej IV (Proceedings of the December 2007 Torun military history conference)