Dr James Mark

Biography

I completed my BA in History, M.Phil. in Russian and East European Studies and a D.Phil. �Divided Memory, Divided Society: The Hungarian Middle Class and the Communist State' at the University of Oxford. I then completed a one-year ESRC funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Exeter and was employed on a lectureship at the University of Plymouth before returning to Exeter in 2004. I have enjoyed teaching modules on a range of subjects concerning history and memory in modern Europe and beyond. My research has mainly concerned the social and cultural history of Communism in Hungary and on the way in which post-Communist societies in central-eastern Europe have dealt with their dictatorial pasts since 1989. A monograph - 'The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in central-eastern Europe' - has been published with Yale University Press (2010). I am also currently participating in  a collaborative trans-European project based at the University of Oxford on the radical political, cultural and social movements which emerged 'around 1968', focussing on Hungary. This work will be published in a collectively written book with Oxford University Press, and an issue of Cultural and Social History. I have been Higher Education Officer for the Oral History Society, leading a national initiative to give support to, and provide greater co-ordination for, oral history teaching and research in British universities (2007-9).