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The University of Southampton
History Part of Humanities
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(023) 8059 4867
Email:
[email protected]

Dr Mark Levene

Emeritus Fellow

Dr Mark Levene's photo

Dr Mark Levene is a Emeritus Fellow in History at the University of Southampton.

Though my background and teaching has been particularly in modern Jewish history, my major focus in the last decade has been in plotting and attempting to interpret the pattern of genocide in recent history. This has meant I've committed what for many historians are two cardinal sins - eschewing both the path of primary research and specialisation in a specific area study. The justification is that I'm trying to see the wood for the trees, or put more pedantically, a broader overview of historical development through the prism of a particularly disturbing but persistent by-product. I feel strongly that the phenomenon cannot be viewed as a series of isolated aberrations, but rather as evidence of a much more serious systemic dysfunction in the nature of western-led international society as it has emerged in the last two to three hundred years.

Research interests

Currently I'm writing a book about genocide in the age of the nation state. As the work has developed I've been increasingly informed by my previous existence as an environmental and peace activist to see beyond the specificity of genocide to the wider underpinnings of conflict and crisis in the modern world. If this sounds a little too contemporary, not to say interdisciplinary, I can only say in my defence, that I see myself approaching all this as a historian!

Research project(s)

'Historians for the right to work!'

Is there a future for history? Historians commonly operate on the unspoken premise that there will always be somebody not only to write about the past but to make intelligible sense of it.

Areas where I can offer postgraduate supervision:

Genocide or other general causes of conflict and crisis in recent (or not so recent) history. Issues of minority rights, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, most particularly as they relate to the stress of war and military service. State-ethnic community relations under the British mandate in Palestine and the transition from Ottoman Empire to successor Middle eastern states.

Dr Mark Levene
Building 65 Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Southampton Avenue Campus Highfield Southampton SO17 1BF United Kingdom

Room Number : 65/2055

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