Joshua Newmark

Profile

I completed my BA in Combined Honours in Arts (History and Politics) at Durham University (2013–2017), graduating with First-Class Honours. I was also privileged to undertake an Erasmus exchange year at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (2015-2016). After graduating I spent two years working as an English Language Assistant in the public education system in Spain, and studied for an MSc in History at the University of Edinburgh (2018–2019), achieving a Distinction. I also worked as an academic translator for humanities research groups from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHC).

Since October 2020 I have been studying for a PhD at the University of Leeds, funded by the AHRC via the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities DTP.  I am privileged to be co-supervised in my PhD by Professor Peter Anderson in the School of History and Professor Richard Cleminson in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. Over the course of my project I have undertaken research in Barcelona, Madrid, Salamanca, and Amsterdam, and placements at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Universidad de Sevilla.

Alongside my research, in the first year of my PhD I was an administrator for the Modern Spanish History Doctoral Seminar. In June 2022, alongside Sophie Turbutt I was co-organiser of the Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula symposium for postgraduate and early career researchers; this was an international event featuring speakers from various ontinents. Sophie and I edited a selection of papers from that conference which were published in by the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies in November 2023 as the ‘Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth-Century History’ special issue. As part of my WRoCAH funding, in the summer of 2022 I undertook a placement with the International Brigade Memorial Trust, producing an edited collection — Remembering Spain: Essays, Memoirs and Poems on the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War — published by The Clapton Press in May 2023. I have also been a peer reviewer for the International Journal of Iberian Studies.

 

Teaching

HIST1055 ‘Historiography & Historical Skills’ (seminar tutor, 2021-22)

HIST1530 ‘The Making of the Twentieth Century’ (seminar tutor, 2022-23)

 

Presentations

• ‘Esbozos de la solidaridad internacional en la trayectoria de la CNT, 1910-1939.’ Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, Madrid, 28 September 2023.
• ‘The Mexican Model: Spanish anarchist idealisation of revolutionary Mexico, 1910-1939.’ Working-Class Anti-Imperialism and the Global Left: New Directions of Study. European Labour History Network, University of Bristol, 30 June 2023.
• ‘Solidarity vs Separatism: The anarchist critique of catalanisme in the 1920s and 1930s’. Catalan Studies Symposium, University of Sheffield, 18 May 2023
• ‘Internacionalismo anarquista en la época de la Guerra Civil: Un esbozo de Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista’. Workshop Internacional. L’Espanya d’Entreguerres: Noves Línes d’Estudi. Centre d’Estudis sobre Dictadures i Democràcies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 9 March 2023
• ‘Anarchist Internationalism in Spain: The Mexican Revolution’. Edinburgh-Oxford Modern Spanish History Doctoral Seminar, online, 5 March 2021

 

Publications

• Newmark, Joshua, and Turbutt, Sophie, ‘Iberian anarchism in twentieth-century history,’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 29. 3 (2023) Dossier: Iberian Anarchism in Twentieth-Century History [Special Issue], 295-99.
• [Book Review] Newmark, Joshua, Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890-1914 by James M. Yeoman, European History Quarterly 53. 4 (2023), 746-48.
• Newmark, Joshua (ed.), Remembering Spain: Essays, Memoirs and Poems on the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (London: The Clapton Press, 2023).
• [Book review] Newmark, Joshua, Why Democracy Failed: The Agrarian Origins of the Spanish Civil War by James Simpson and Juan Carmona, Historia Agraria de América Latina 4. 1 (2023, 140-42..
• Newmark, Joshua ‘“Put rifles in their hands!”: Spanish anarchist solidarity with the early Mexican Revolution, WRoCAH Journal 6 (2022), 64-74.

Research interests

My doctoral thesis examines internationalism in the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain, 1910-1939. Anarcho-syndicalists considered their struggle against capitalism and the state to a global one, and attempted to shape their organisations, political culture and international relations to reflect this. My research explores this endeavour and the various divisions and difficulties they faced, in dialogue with global events such as the Mexican and Russian Revolutions, the rise of fascism, and the Spanish Civil War. Although I am examining anarcho-syndicalist internationalism as part of the history of Spain, I also draw on examples of radical international solidarity elsewhere, such as Black Internationalism and the anti-imperial internationalism of the New Left, to illuminate the Spanish case.

Qualifications

• MSc History
• BA Combined Honours in Arts (History and Politics & International Relations)