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Professor Jonathan Conlin

Professor Jonathan Conlin

 BA Oxon MA PhD Cantab FRHistS FHA
Professor of Modern History

Research interests

  • History of Museums
  • Late Ottoman Empire/Middle East and 1923 Lausanne Treaty
  • British Art/Cultural History

More research

Accepting applications from PhD students.

Email: j.conlin@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

About

I am a historian of cultural history from c. 1750 to the present, with a particular interest in the history of museums. My books include the first comparative history of Paris and London and a study of the landmark 1969 BBC series "Civilisation", and have been translated into eight languages. Alongside academic journals I have written for The Conversation, GQ, Sight and Sound and History Today, and am currently working on two graphic novels. In 2017 I co-founded The Lausanne Project, which explores the legacy of the Treaty of Lausanne a century on. In 2019 Profile published Mr Five Per Cent, a biography of the Anglo-Armenian oil magnate, financier and art collector Calouste Gulbenkian (1869-1955), that won the BAC Wadsworth Prize for Business History.

In 2021 Columbia University Press commissioned me to write The Met: A People's History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For more on this ground-breaking project, see the "Research" tab. In 2023 I was commissioned by the National Gallery (London) to write their authorized bicentenary history.

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