Faculty Highlights

Awards and Prizes Maynooth University research achievement awards Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy

Dr John Paul Newman

Dr John Paul Newman, Department of History, and the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies

Dr John Paul Newman, Department of History, and the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies won the early career research achievement award in the Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy.

Dr John Paul Newman is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth century European History. He completed his PhD at the University of Southampton (supervised by Professor Mark Cornwall) and from 2008- 2011 he was an ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the project 'Paramilitary Violence after the Great War', to which he contributed a case study of violence in the Balkans.

He is interested in the modern history of the Balkans and EastCentral Europe, with a particular focus on Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Czechoslovakia. His work to date has focused on war veterans, paramilitary violence, and on the larger legacies left by war in the region. He has been working on a large research project looking at victorious societies and cultures of war victory in twentieth century Europe, a study of the Croatian General Josip Jela i and the intersections of national and imperial identities in nineteenth-century Central Europe, and a book-length study of irregular warfare and paramilitary violence in the Balkans, provisionally titled ‘Freedom or Death: A History of Guerilla Warfare in the Balkans. His most significant achievement recently has been the publication of several books addressing the First World War and it consequences in Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He has published on veterans of the First World War, paramilitary violence, and the larger legacies left by war in the region. His monograph, ‘Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of StateBuilding, 1903-1945’ was the first of its kind to address long-term problems created by War and its aftermath in the Balkans. The book was published with Cambridge University Press. He has also contributed to and edited 3 volumes on various aspects of war and its aftermath and two journal special editions on related topics.