War and Conflict

Studies have focused on many aspects of strategic, operational, and tactical warfare:

• Civil War in England and the United States. The conduct of military operations and affairs within a civil war environment is the basis of the work of Prof Malcolm Wanklyn on the armies of the mid-seventeenth century and of Dr Howard Fuller on the political-military interface and naval policy and conflict during the American Civil War.
• The era of the First World War is the focus of the work of the First World War Study Group. Prof Gary Sheffield, Dr Spencer Jones, Prof Stephen Badsey, Dr Oliver Wilkinson, Prof Laura Ugolini and Dr Simon Constantine have all undertaken research and published widely over many years on aspects of leadership, operations, propaganda, impact and legacy before, during and after the 1914-1918 war. During the one-hundred-year commemorations they advised on government policy, appeared across the media and established and ran a major international conference: 1918-2018 The End of the War and the Reshaping of a Century, in September 2018. The product of this wealth of research underpins the widely acclaimed and highly successful MA History of Britain and the First World War.
• The Second World War is the focus of research projects carried out by Prof John Buckley and Prof Dieter Steinert. The focus of this research is on the British Army in Northwest Europe 1944-5, leadership and command, and occupation policies and impact. In addition to the work of the Forced Labour and Beyond Camps projects, campaigns such as Operation Market Garden and War in the Low Countries 1944  and the El Alamein and the War in the Mediterranean 1942 have been the focus of recent projects. The research in this group underpins the MA Second World War Studies
• Air Power history and doctrine is the main aspect of the work Prof Pete Gray, Prof John Buckley and Dr Maria Burczynska. Their work has examined the development of air power theory, doctrine and practice in the twentieth century and aspects of more modern air power culture and thinking. This work underpins the MA Air, Space and Cyber Power Studies, a fully on-line and distance learning programme sponsored by the RAF and the Ministry of Defence

The Terrorism and Conflict Group examines the causes, impact and possible resolution of terrorism and political violence in the contemporary world.  Members of the group evaluate conflict from both empirical and theoretical perspectives and examine terrorism and conflict resolution at both a nation-state level and in comparative context.

Prof George Kassimeris has published widely on terrorism in Greece and has also written on the challenges of right wing nationalism and Islamophobia in the UK.  Dr Mike Cunningham, Dr Christopher Norton and Dr Eamonn O’Kane’s work deals with the causes of and challenges posed by political violence with particular reference to Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Sri Lanka.  Members of the Group have secured funding for projects from the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield Foundation and The Smith Richardson Foundation and regularly organise conferences and public lectures at the University of Wolverhampton.  They have also devised and delivered projects funded by the European Union on conflict resolution, terrorism and political violence and why people riot, with partners in Norway, Spain and Greece.

Supported by British and international foundations, Prof Dieter Steinert’s research focuses in particular on Polish, Soviet and Jewish children forced to work in Germany and in German occupied Eastern Europe. Both contemporary documents and testimonies show that children were forced to work in all branches of industry, in agriculture and as domestics in German households, while the Wehrmacht and SS deployed children, for example, in construction work on fortifications, bridges, roads and airfields. Conferences: Children and War: Past and Present, co-organized together with colleagues from the University of Salzburg (Salzburg 2010, 2013 and 2016).

The network headed by Alex Alexandrou is made up of historians of war with an interest in football, and football club historians. It aims to brings together historians from the academic and football worlds so that for the first time all the academic, practitioner and fan research centred around football, war and history can link up.

• Stephen Badsey, The German Corpse Factory: A Study in First World War Propaganda, (2019)
• John Buckley (with Paul Beaver), The Royal Air Force: The First Hundred Years (2018).
• Howard Fuller, Turret versus Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster, 1860-1870, (2020)
• Spencer Jones (ed.), Catholic General: The Private Wartime Correspondence of Major-General Sir Cecil Edward Pereira, 1914-1919, (2020).
• George Kassimeris, ‘What I have learned about countering terrorism in the UK: A conversation with Robert Spencer,’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, (2021)
• Eamonn O’Kane, The Northern Ireland Peace Process: From Bombs to Brexit, (2020)
• Gary Sheffield, In Haig’s Shadow: Brigadier-General Hugo de Pree and the First World War, (2019)
• Dieter Steinert, Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit: Erinnerungen jüdischer Kinder 1938-1945, (2018)
• Oliver Wilkinson, British Prisoners of War in First World War Germany, (2019)
• Malcolm Wanklyn, Parliament’s Generals: Supreme Command and Politics during the British Wars 1642-1651, (2019)

MA Military History