John Paul Newman, Visiting Fellowship 2024/25

Biography

Dr John Paul Newman is an Associate Professor in Twentieth-century European History. He is interested in the modern history of Southeastern and East-Central Europe, with a particular focus on Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. His first book, Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State-Building, 1903-1945, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. He is currently working on a study of the birth, life, and afterlife of the Illyrian movement in the South Slav lands, provisionally titled ‘Illyria Unbound: Reflections on Nation and Identity in Modern Central Europe’ (under contract with Oxford University Press).

Visiting Fellowship July 2025

Motivation for the fellowship

As an INZ fellow, I will be working on a study of the ‘School for the Blind in Zemun’ in the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Through a careful study of the directorship and institutional history of this school, I want to show how international and transnational ideas about disability care, rehabilitation, and training were received and elaborated in Yugoslavia and beyond. I intend to show the extent and the limits of the ‘institutionalization’ of blind and disability in the interwar kingdom. I want to ask how far pioneering institutes such as the School for the Blind influenced and shaped disability care, given that the largest number of disabled people in Yugoslavia had no direct contact with the school itself. This case study is part of a larger research interest in the histories of disability in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an interest that I have been developing with colleagues at my home institute in Ireland, Maynooth University. It is thus also my hope that Maynooth will become part of a larger network of research and teaching institutes involved in innovative study of the distinct histories of disability throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the modern period. To this end, the fellowship and INZ will also, I hope, provide the opportunity to forge new collaborations and connections with colleagues who are currently working on these topics.

Publications

Books

Illyria Unbound: Reflections on Nation and Identity in Modern Central Europe (under contract with Oxford University Press).

Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State-building, 1903-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2015, 2018 second edition). [Serbian-language edition Jugoslavija u senci rata ratni veterani i stvaranje nove države 1903-1945 (Službeni glasnik, 2018).

Edited Volumes

Anti-Axis Resistance in Southeastern Europe in the Second World War (with Ljubinka Škodrić and Rade Ristanović), (Brill, 2023).

Balkan Legacies: The Aftermaths of War and Socialism in Southeastern Europe (with Balázs Apor), (Purdue University Press, 2021).

World War One in Central and Eastern Europe: Politics, Conflict, and Military Experience (with Judith Devlin and Maria Falina), (Bloomsbury, 2018, 2020 second edition).

Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Great War in East-Central Europe (with Mark Cornwall), (Berghahn, 2016, 2017 second edition).

Journal Special Editions

‘Ethnic and Social Minorities in Twentieth-Century European Social Welfare’, (with Hanna Lindberg and Karolina Lendák-Kabók) European Review of History / Revue européenne d’histoire 31/2 (2024).

Journal Special Editions

‘War Veterans, Borders, and Boundaries of Welfare’ (with Tina Filipović and Oksana Vynnyk), European History Quarterly (forthcoming).

‘Ethnic and Social Minorities in Twentieth-Century European Social Welfare’, (with Hanna Lindberg and Karolina Lendák-Kabók) European Review of History / Revue européenne d’histoire 31/2 (2024).

‘Suicide, War, and Peace in East-Central Europe, 1918-1968’ Slavic Review, 82/2 (2024) (with Orel Bielenson).

‘The Sokol Movement between State and Society in Interwar East-Central Europe’, East Central Europe, 50 (2023) (with Lucija Balikić, Vojtěch Pojar).

‘1918 and the Old-New Europe’, special edition of Nationalities Papers 49/4 (2021), (editor, with Lili Zach).

‘Cultures of Victory and Victorious Societies in the Twentieth Century’, special edition of Journal of Contemporary History, 54/3 (2019).

‘Aftershocks: Paramilitary Violence after World War One’, special edition of Contemporary European History, 19/3 (August 2010), guest editor (with Julia Eichenberg).

Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals and Outlets

‘War Veterans, Minorities, and Crisis Points in Yugoslav Welfare’ (with Karolina Lendák-Kabók), European Review of History / Revue européenne d’histoire 31/2 (2024).

‘Minorities and the Making of Modern European Welfare: Introduction to Special Issue “Ethnic and Social Minorities in European Welfare”’ (with Karolina Lendák-Kabók, Hanna Lindberg), European Review of History European Review of History / Revue européenne d’histoire 31/2 (2024).

‘Introduction: Suicide, War, and Peace in East-Central Europe, 1918-1968’ Slavic Review, 82/2 (2024) (with Orel Bielenson)

‘Suicide and the Hermeneutics of Political and National Community in the Interwar Czechoslovak Republic’, Slavic Review, 82/2 (2024)