Staff profile
Professor Kay Schiller
Professor (Modern European History)
| Affiliation |
|---|
| Professor (Modern European History) in the Department of History |
Biography
Kay Schiller is a historian of 20th-century Germany. He has published articles and books on German cultural and sports history, including on the history of football, on modern German-Jewish history and on the history of the Federal Republic and the GDR.
He has co-edited volumes on German sport history and the history of the FIFA World Cup, co-authored a monograph on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, the award-winning The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany, and written a monograph on the 1974 FIFA World Cup in West Germany. His most recent book (2022) is a biography of the 1920s Jewish-German sprinter, antifascist activist, emigre to Britain and post-war journalist and writer Alex Natan (1906-71).
He is currently researching the history of German Zionist athletics, including (with Udi Carmi) the influence of German sports models on sports in Palestine and Israel, with a special focus on the activities of the Zionist sports functionary Emanuel Ernst Simon (1898-1988). He is also a Co-I on the British Academy funded project Expanding the History of Sport: Leisure, Health and the Body in Africa.
In 2010-11 he was a Senior Research Fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin and during 2012-13 DAAD Visiting Professor in Contemporary History at Technical University Dresden. In 2018-19 he led the Durham IAS sponsored project Masculinities in Martial Sports: West, East and Global South. In 2018-19 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich and Honorary Fellow at Historisches Kolleg Munich. In 2019-20 he was a Research Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
From 2018 to 2023 he was editor-in-chief of Sport in History (Taylor & Francis). He is a member of the international editorial boards of Stadion. International Journal of the History of Sport, Sport und Gesellschaft - Sport and Society and Sport in History.
He is also a keen runner and England Athletics qualified running coach and used to officiate amateur football games as a FA qualified referee.
Doctoral Supervision
Kay Schiller welcomes inquiries from potential postgraduate students in modern German history and modern European sport history.
Research interests
- Sports history, especially the history of football and athletics
- Post-1945 Germany
- Modern German cultural and intellectual history
- German-Jewish history