Simon Ball
- Position: Professor of International History and Politics
- Areas of expertise: Second World War; Cold War; British politics; secret intelligence; assassination
- Email: S.J.Ball@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 1094
Profile
I was appointed to the University’s Chair of International History & Politics in 2012. Previously I was Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Glasgow.
Research interests
Interests
My research has concentrated on five interrelated themes: the Cold War; the Second World War; British politics, assassination in international politics; and secret intelligence in the twentieth century. I was the editor of War in History between 2014 and 2021. I sit on the editorial boards of Intelligence & National Security and Diplomacy & Statecraft.
Publications
I am the author of a number of books including: Secret History: Writing the Rise of Britain’s Intelligence Services (Montreal: MQUP, 2020), Alamein (Oxford: OUP, 2016); The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean, 1935–1949 (London: Harper Press, 2009); The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends, and the World They Made (London: HarperCollins, 2004); The Cold War: An International History 1947–1991 (London: Arnold & New York: OUP, 1998, reprinted Bloomsbury USA, 2009); The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy and Britain’s World Role, 1945–1960 (Boulder, Co. and Oxford: Westview, 1995, reprinted Routledge, 2022).
Recent publications include:
- ‘Assassination from MLK to Mrs T: Contrast and Convergence in the United States and Britain’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 33 (2022), pp. 64-85.
- The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy and Britain’s World Role, 1945-1960 (Abingdon: Routledge Revivals, 2022). ISBN 978-0-429-30914-4.
- Secret History (Montreal: MQUP, 2020). ISBN 978-0-22-800081-5.
- Cultures of Intelligence in the Era of the World Wars, edited by Simon Ball, Philipp Gassert, Andreas Gestrich and Sönke Neitzel (Oxford: OUP, 2020). ISBN 978-0-19-886720-3.
- ‘The State and the Assassination Threat in Britain, 1971-1984’, The Historical Journal, 62 (2019), pp. 241–265.
Research Projects
AHRC, Cultures of Intelligence. The main aim of the project was to deepen our knowledge of the mid-twentieth century intelligence services in Britain. It did so by going beyond the institutional history of particular intelligence services and interrogating the nature of an overarching culture of intelligence, manifested both in the intelligence community and the wider public sphere. Britain was placed in comparative perspective through formal co-operation with a parallel project Kulturen der “Intelligence”. funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Dusseldorf. A German documentary film was made about the project.
AHRC, The Practice of International History in the 21st Century (PIH21). An AHRC international network that interrogated the underlying practice-based conceptual framework of international history in the contemporary era. The project partner was the Chief Historian, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
External Collaboration
Berlin
Between 2012 and 2021 I sat on the International Board (Beirat) of the AlliiertenMuseum, Berlin. The museum was created in 1994 by the government of the Federal Republic to mark the end of the post-war occupation regime in Berlin. It is part of the Federal museums system. Members of the board are nominated by the director of the museum but are approved by the military attachés of Britain, the USA and France on behalf of their respective governments. The main business of the board concerns the long-running project to establish the museum as the museum in residence at the Tempelhof complex in south-central Berlin. In November 2015 the Federal Government announced that it had awarded the AlliiertenMuseum 27 million euros to fund the Tempelhof Project. This work featured in an Impact Case Study in the Research Excellence Framework. I have also worked on the creation of Liberation Route Europe, a European Union-funded alliance of museums collaborating to commemorate the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule in 1944–1945. In 2022 I will be joining the expert advisory panel for the new museum concept at the Militärhistorisches Museum Flugplatz Berlin-Gatow.
Media
I have worked regularly with radio and TV producers in the UK and Germany. My most recent project is Secrets of Spies: Assassination with ITN Productions.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- MA (Oxon.)
- PhD (Cantab.)
Student education
International History and Politics
Since 1967 the holder of the Chair of International History and Politics has been the senior faculty member for a specialised undergraduate degree programme. International History and Politics (IHP) remains a highly successful history degree at Leeds.
PhD Supervision
I have a track-record of successful Ph.D supervision and welcome new candidates in any field of international or military history. I currently supervise an outstanding group of PhD researchers.
White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities
I was the inaugural chairman of the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) History Subject Panel. WRoCAH is the Collaborative Doctoral Training Partnership of the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Its studentships are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Research groups and institutes
- War and Peace