About Us

The Oxford Centre for European History (OCEH), based in Oxford University’s History Faculty, was set up in 1999 to generate new and exciting research projects in European and British history from the Renaissance to the present, to build collaborations and research networks with research institutes and universities in the UK, Europe and worldwide, to provide opportunities for research collaboration and facilities for Visiting Researchers, and to train new generations of research students in the field of modern European and British History.

The OCEH is supported by around forty leading historians at Oxford, from which it draws its management committee. This is headed by the Chair, Dr. Giuseppe Marcocci, and the Centre's Research Director, Professor David Priestland.

Research Aims

The OCEH has established research networks with other universities and research institutes from Princeton to Sydney. It was part of EurHistXX - European Network of Contemporary History, funded by the French CNRS, which linked a dozen major historical research centres in Europe, and led to the publication of the volume Europe's Postwar Periods - 1989, 1945, 1918: Writing History Backwards, edited by Martin Conway, Pieter Lagrou, and Henry Rousso (Bloomsbury, 2018).

The OCEH encourages international collaboration between research students through annual graduate workshops held in conjunction with the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Paris, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Humboldt University, Berlin, and the University of Padua, with Geneva University, with Mainz University, and with Sciences Po-Paris. Through the OCEH, the University of Oxford is also involved in the Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH) Consortium.