Professor Jonathan Fennell

Dr Jonathan Fennell is Professor of the History of War and Society at King’s College London. After completing a Doctorate in Modern History at the University of Oxford, Jonathan worked in management consultancy in the City before joining the Defence Studies Department in 2009. Prior to this, he was awarded a joint honours History and Politics Degree at University College Dublin and studied History as an Erasmus Scholar at Université Lumière Lyon II. Jonathan now holds a joint position between the Defence Studies and War Studies Departments at King’s.

 

Jonathan’s research focuses on the history of Britain and the Commonwealth and the transnational history of the Second World War. He has written two books and is co-editor of a third. He has published articles in research journals and other media as well as contributing chapters to edited collections. His most recent monograph, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), won the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History 2020, and also the Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal for the History of the British Army 2020. It was awarded the silver medal in the Military History Matters Book of the Year 2020 (a prize decided by public vote) and was third place in the British Army Military Book of the Year, 2020.

 

Jonathan is Director of Research at the Defence Studies Department, Co-Director of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War and Co-Founder and President of the international scholarly society, the Second World War Research Group.

Research

• History
• Conflict and socio-political change
• War and public philosophy
• Combat morale and motivation theory
• Conflict and security
• Policy and society
• Politics
• International relations

Jonathan’s current research project explores the causes, conduct and consequences of the Second World War. It sets out to develop a fresh account of the war, which bridges the gap between traditional military histories and the mainstream political, social, cultural, economic and environmental histories of the period. The outcome of this research will be published in a three-volume trilogy.

To pursue this aim, the project engages in a series of interlocking analytical approaches: it fully embraces a global, or transnational, ‘vista’ of the Second World War; it is integrative, not only in terms of military, global, social, economic, environmental and cultural history, but also with regards to marginalized histories; and it is committed to exploring the ‘culture of war’, the experiential. This new history aims to interrogate the personal alongside, and in the context of, the great complex events of the 1930s and 1940s. It will be a history of women and men of varied races, creeds and socio-economic backgrounds; one that links the home and battle fronts and places the dramatic political, economic, social, cultural and environmental changes of the second half of the Twentieth Century in a new context.

The trilogy will be published by Penguin Random House (Viking) in the UK, HarperCollins in the US, CITIC in China and Spectrum in the Netherlands.

Jonathan’s research has been supported by grants from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Australian Army’s History Unit. He is currently PI on a Collaborative Doctoral Award funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the project, which is in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, focuses on ‘Training in the British and Commonwealth Armies in the Second World War’.

Teaching

Teach modules on Modern British and Commonwealth History, The Second World War, War Studies, War and Society, International Relations and Ethics.

PhD Supervision

Dr Fennell is happy to supervise PhD students in the following broad subject areas:

• The Second World War
• War and Socio-Political Change
• War and Public Philosophy
• Twentieth Century British and Commonwealth History
• Strategy
• Morale and Motivation
• Military Doctrine

Publications

Books

• The Second World War, Volume III: A New World, 1944-49 (London, New York, Amsterdam & Beijing: Penguin (Viking), HarperCollins, Spectrum & CITIC, Forthcoming 2031).
• The Second World War, Volume II: The Burning Furnace, 1942-44 (London, New York, Amsterdam & Beijing: Penguin (Viking), HarperCollins, Spectrum & CITIC, Forthcoming 2029).
• The Second World War, Volume I: The Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1931-42 (London, New York, Amsterdam & Beijing: Penguin (Viking), HarperCollins, Spectrum & CITIC, Forthcoming 2026).
• The Peoples’ War: The Second World War in Socio-Political Perspective, Alex Wilson, Richard Hammond and Jonathan Fennell (eds.), (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).
• Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
• Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Book Chapters:

• ‘Introduction’ in Alex Wilson, Richard Hammond and Jonathan Fennell (eds.), The Peoples’ War: The Second World War in Socio-Political Perspective (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).
• ‘Conservatism, Radicalism and Global Conflict: Britain’s War, 1939-1945’, in Paul Bartrop (ed.), The Routledge History of the Second World War (London: Routledge, 2021).
• ‘Legitimacy, Consent, and the Mobilization of the British and Commonwealth Armies during the Second World War’, in Douglas E. Delaney, Mark Frost and Andrew L. Brown (eds.), Manpower and Armies of the British Empire during the two World Wars (Cornell University Press, 2021).
• ‘The British Army in WWII’, in D. Showalter (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Military History (Oxford University Press, 2020).
• ‘South African Veterans and the Institutionalisation of Apartheid in South Africa’, in Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (eds.), War Veterans and the World After 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory (London: Routledge, 2018).
• ‘Reevaluating Combat Cohesion: The British Second Army in The Northwest Europe Campaign of the Second World War’, in Anthony King (ed.), Frontline: Combat and Cohesion in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Articles:

• ‘Applied Conflict History and the Reflective Practitioner’, Ares & Athena, Issue 14, February 2019.
• ‘Soldiers and Social Change: The Forces Vote in the Second World War and New Zealand’s Great Experiment in Social Citizenship’, English Historical Review, Vol. 132, Issue. 554 (2017).
• ‘In Search of the ‘X’ Factor: Morale and the Study of Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 37, Nos. 6-7 (2014).
• ‘Morale and Combat Performance: An Introduction’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 37, Nos. 6-7 (2014).
• ‘Courage, Cowardice and Combat Performance: Eighth Army and the Crisis in North Africa, 1942’, War in History, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2013).
• ‘Air Power and Morale in the North African Campaign of the Second World War’, Air Power Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2012).

Select Media Articles:

• ‘Booklist 2020-21’, The Society for Army Historical Research, November 2020.
• ‘VJ Day: Turning the Tide in the East’, BBC History Magazine, Issue 22, August 2020.
• ‘The World Redrawn: The Allied victory that followed the Normandy landings wasn’t merely a military triumph – it unleashed powers of change around the globe’, BBC World Histories Magazine, Issue 16, June/July 2019.
• ‘The Furlough Mutiny and the Struggle for Cassino in the Second World War’, Defence-in-Depth Blog, March 2019.
• ‘VJ Day: Turning the Tide in the East’, BBC History Magazine, Issue 22, August 2019.
• ‘The World Redrawn: The Allied victory that followed the Normandy landings wasn’t merely a military triumph – it unleashed powers of change around the globe’, BBC World Histories Magazine, Issue 16, June/July 2019.
• ‘The Furlough Mutiny and the Struggle for Cassino in the Second World War’, Defence-in-Depth, March 2019.
• ‘The Story of the State is Far From an Easy Tale of Good Versus Evil’, The Irish Times, 7 February 2019.
• ‘The Ordinary Soldiers' War’, Bookbrunch, 7 February 2019.
• ‘The Defect that Brexit and MAGA Share’, History News Network, 16 January 2019.

Visit Professor Jonathan Fennell's PURE profile here.