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. During the 2015–2016 academic year, I was also privileged to undertake an Erasmus exchange year at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. After graduating I spent two years working as an English Language Assistant in the public education system in different parts of Spain, and studied for an MSc in History at the University of Edinburgh (2018–2019), achieving a Distinction. I have 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. During this time I have been a peer reviewer for the International Journal of Iberian Studies and an administrator for the Modern Spanish History Doctoral Seminar, as well as co-organiser of Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula: A PGR/ECR Symposium (upcoming, June 2022) as part of the event calendar for the Centre for the History of Ibero-America. I have mentored final-year undergraduate students on their dissertation projects, and taught at undergraduate level on HIST1055: Historiography & Historical Skills with a strand dedicated to ‘Anarchism in Spain: 1868–1939’. 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. 

Papers

• ‘Anarchist Internationalism in Spain: The Mexican Revolution’. Edinburgh-Oxford Modern Spanish History Doctoral Seminar, 5 March 2021

Publications

• ‘“Put rifles in their hands!”: Spanish anarchist solidarity with the early Mexican Revolution, WRoCAH Journal [forthcoming, 2022]

Research interests

My doctoral project examines the role of internationalism and international solidarity in the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain during the period of 1907 to 1939. Internationalism encompassed a range of ideas and practices within anarchist thought, print culture, and activism both before and during the revolutionary upheaval of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). I delve into this broad interpretation of internationalism, and explore the ways in which it mobilised and was mobilised by anarchists during this period, drawing on an interdisciplinary literature on the relationship between the local and the global/transnational to consider how the anarchist movement could be simultaneously an extensive transnational network of radicals and exiles, and an intensely ‘rooted’ phenomenon focused on particular working-class communities within Spain. I explore the evolving responses of anarchists in Spain to the Mexican and Russian Revolutions, First World War, and the rise of fascism in Europe, and their engagement with the international dimension of the Spanish Civil War. As well as deepening our understanding of this important force in contemporary Spanish history, this project looks to ask broader questions about the relationship between ideologies of global justice, activist networks, and the grassroots. Beyond Spain, I have a wider interest in the history of anarchism and revolutionary politics.

Qualifications

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