Stefan Berger is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, where he is also Director of the Manchester Jean-Monnet-Centre of Excellence. He has chaired a European Science Foundation Programme entitled ‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe’ (2003-2008), and he is just completing a British Academy funded project on ‘Britain and the GDR, 1949 – 1990’. He has published widely on comparative labour history, the history of historiography, national identity and nationalism, as well as historical theory.