Alexander D. Brown is a historian of twentieth-century Europe specialising in the German Democratic Republic, antifascism, Holocaust memory, and Jewish political life under socialism. He is the author of Paul Merker, the GDR, and the Politics of Memory: “Purging Cosmopolitanism”? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), which examines the ideological uses of antifascism, antisemitism, and Holocaust memory in post-1990 representations of East Germany. He is currently completing a second monograph, The Answer to Auschwitz? Holocaust Memory and Antifascism in the Other Germany, developed from his Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and based on extensive archival research and oral history.
As a Research Fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute London, Dr. Brown is undertaking the project From Exile to East Berlin: British Encounters with German-Jewish Antifascism, 1933–1989. This research traces the trajectories of German-Jewish antifascists who found refuge in Britain after 1933 and later became influential figures in the political and cultural life of the GDR, analysing how experiences of exile shaped socialist-Jewish antifascism and how East German approaches to Holocaust justice and commemoration were perceived in Britain.
Born in Sheffield and educated at the University of Birmingham (BA, MRes, PhD) Dr. Brown has previously worked on research projects at Newcastle University and the University of Liverpool.