Biography

Erik Linstrum is a historian of modern Britain in its imperial, European, and global contexts. His most recent book, Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire, is a history of war coming home. The book traces reports of atrocities from the counterinsurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus as they circulated through British society in the 1950s: from the anticolonial left to the imperialist and fascist right, from Fleet Street to the Church of England, from BBC teleplays to the West End theater scene. It links the production of knowledge about torture and other forms of brutality to the tactics of accommodation which blunted their political impact. Age of Emergency was shortlisted for the Stansky Book Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies and the Templer Medal of the Society for Army Historical Research.    

Linstrum’s current research sets British imperial violence in wider comparative and connective frames, including the relationship between the “high imperialism” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the rise of European fascism. His first book, Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire, was awarded the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book of the year in European international history. Linstrum serves as associate editor of the Journal of British Studies and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History. He has held fellowships with the American Academy in Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the Institute of Historical Research in London. During the 2024-25 academic year, he is on research leave at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.