Alexander Beard

I began my studies as an undergraduate in History and German at University College, Oxford. I emerged with a First Class degree and was awarded a number of academic accolades, including the Gibbs Prize (proxime accessit) for the second-highest performance of all History and Joint Schools candidates. My thesis on the migration of Vietnamese contract workers to East Germany was recognised with first place in the German History Society's Undergraduate Essay Prize competition. With the help of a Benefactors' Scholarship from St John's College, I then completed an MPhil in Modern European History at Cambridge, graduating with a Distinction.

The subject of my doctoral project, co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Magdalen College Scholarship, is the discourse of democratic socialism elaborated by dissidents resisting one-party rule in East Germany throughout the 1980s. It builds on my longstanding interest in both socialism as a theory and its practice in Central and Eastern Europe, in the revolutionary upheaval of 1989, and in the multidimensional relationship between political, intellectual and (especially German) cultural history. I will continue to draw on the interdisciplinary perspective I developed during my first degree. It is a privilege to be supervised by Professor Paul Betts, who also oversaw my undergraduate dissertation.