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Professor Panikos Panayi

Job: Professor of European History

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Humanities

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116 2078681

E: ppanayi@dmu.ac.uk

W: /soh

 

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Personal profile

Panikos Panayi is Professor of European History. He has worked at ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ since 1990 and has held a personal Chair since 1999. He has published widely and his research fits into the following areas: the history of immigration and interethnic relations; the history of food; the First World War; German history; the history of London; and the history of the Cypriot people.

Research group affiliations

History Research Group

Publications and outputs


  • dc.title: Prisoners of War and Internees dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: This article examines the experiences of military and civilian prisoners of war in Britain between 1914 and 1919.

  • dc.title: Minorities at the Death of the Continental European Empires, 1918-23 dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: This article examines the fate of minorities in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. It outlines the different types of outsiders, their plight during the conflict and developments at the conclusion of peace. While continental empires had kept most ethic outsiders relatively invisible until the nineteenth century rise of nationalism, they represent key players in helping us to understand the First World War. The post-War settlement meant the reconfiguration of minorities because of the collapse of continental empires but only resulted in short term solutions which the Second World War and the events which followed that conflict would solve in a much more thorough and even more brutal manner.

  • dc.title: Migration and the Making of the World Capital dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: An examination of the role of migration in the development of London.

  • dc.title: The Elimination of Germans from the British Empire at the end of the First World War dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: During the course of the nineteenth century millions of Germans left their homeland to settle throughout the world. While most went towards the Americas, hundreds of thousands moved to Britain and its Empire consisting of those with agricultural and working class backgrounds, as well as elites. By 1914, despite rising Germanophobia as the Great War approached, the migrants remained an integrated group. My article will demonstrate how the development of a Germanophobic ideology, emanating from London, but present throughout British possessions in an equally virulent manner, had a devastating impact upon the German communities. The racist ideology meant that Germans faced a combination of draconian measures in the form of internment, property confiscation and deportation. The paper will focus upon the last of these, demonstrating that, while expulsions took place throughout the War, especially against women, who generally escaped the gendered internment policy, the ‘extirpation – root and branch and seed - of German control and influence from the British Empire’, as put forward by the London based Germanophobic pressure group the British Empire Union, became imperial policy. My paper will focus upon the marginalization of the Germans during the Great War and their elimination at its conclusion, which became total in some cases (such as India) and partial in others (such as Great Britain). The article will demonstrate how the plight of the Germans at the end of the First world War fits into the wider picture of minority persecution during the era of the Great War as Empires collapsed.

  • dc.title: The bewildered peasant: family, migration and murder in the Greek Cypriot community in London dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos; Varnava, Andrekos dc.description.abstract: Greek Cypriots became a key feature of early post-Second World War London. This article focuses on the case of the penultimate woman hanged in Britain, Styllou Christofi, who was executed in December 1954 for the murder of her German-born daughter-in-law, Hella. It outlines the emergence of the Cypriot community in London, tackles the image of the Cypriot in the British imperial imagination and investigates the hostility that this new community faced in Britain. The article investigates the nature of family in Cyprus and London and questions why Cypriots have received so little attention from historians, despite their numbers. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.

  • dc.title: Migrant City: A New History of London dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: The first history of London to show how immigrants have built, shaped and made a great success of the capital city London is now a global financial and multicultural hub in which over three hundred languages are spoken. But the history of London has always been a history of immigration. Panikos Panayi explores the rich and vibrant story of London– from its founding two millennia ago by Roman invaders, to Jewish and German immigrants in the Victorian period, to the Windrush generation invited from Caribbean countries in the twentieth century. Panayi shows how migration has been fundamental to London’s economic, social, political and cultural development. Migrant City sheds light on the various ways in which newcomers have shaped London life, acting as cheap labour, contributing to the success of its financial sector, its curry houses, and its football clubs. London’s economy has long been driven by migrants, from earlier continental financiers and more recent European Union citizens. Without immigration, fueled by globalization, Panayi argues, London would not have become the world city it is today.

  • dc.title: Enemies in the Empire: Civilian Internment in the British Empire during the First World War dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos; Manz, Stefan dc.description.abstract: During the First World War, Britain was the epicentre of global mass internment and deportation operations. Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Turks, and Bulgarians who had settled in Britain and its overseas territories were deemed to be a potential danger to the realm through their ties with the Central Powers and were classified as 'enemy aliens'. A complex set of wartime legislation imposed limitations on their freedom of movement, expression, and property possession. Approximately 50,000 men and some women experienced the most drastic step of enemy alien control, namely internment behind barbed wire, in many cases for the whole duration of the war and thousands of miles away from the place of arrest. Enemies in the Empire is the first study to analyse British internment operations against civilian 'enemies' during the First World War from an imperial perspective. The narrative takes a three-pronged approach. In addition to a global examination, the volume demonstrates how internment operated on a (proto-) national scale within the three selected case studies of the metropole (Britain), a white dominion (South Africa), and a colony under direct rule (India). Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi then bring their study to the local level by concentrating on the three camps Knockaloe (Britain), Fort Napier (South Africa), and Ahmednagar (India), allowing for detailed analyses of personal experiences. Although conditions were generally humane, in some cases, suffering occurred. The study argues that the British Empire played a key role in developing civilian internment as a central element of warfare and national security on a global scale.

  • dc.title: 'Barbed Wire Disease’ or a ‘Prison Camp Society’: The Everyday Lives of German Internees on the Isle of Man, 1914-1919 dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: During the First World War hundreds of thousands of civilians spent years behind barbed wire throughout the world. London formed the centre of the global internment system which meant the incarceration of enemy aliens in camps throughout the Empire. The symbol of internment consisted of the Isle of Man, which, housed two camps in Douglas and, above all, Knockaloe, through which over thirty thousand people passed, many of whom would remain for years. This paper will begin with an introduction on the adoption of a policy of internment within Britain and then move on to the decision to use the Isle of Man to hold German civilians. It will focus upon the all male internees held here and analyse their experiences. Two key paradigms emerged on incarceration during the First World War. The first constructed a psychosis called barbed wire disease, put forward particularly by the Swiss psychologist A. L. Vischer, who visited Douglas and Knockaloe on several occasions on behalf of the Swiss Embassy, which looked after German interests in Britain from 1917. The alternative view, which evolved decades later, developed the idea of a prisoners’ camp society, put forward by John Davidson Ketchum, who had spent time as a national of the British Empire, in the internment camp in Ruhleben in Berlin during the Great War. Using a wide range of sources, this paper will ask whether the prisoners became victims of depression or managed to overcome the problems thrown up by years of internment by developing social and cultural activity.

  • dc.title: Germans as Minorities during the First World War: Global Comparative Perspectives’ in Panikos Panayi (Ed.), Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 3-25. dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: The article introduces the relationship between German minorities and the states in which they lived during the Great War.

  • dc.title: Germans as Minorities During the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective dc.contributor.author: Panayi, Panikos dc.description.abstract: Offering a global comparative perspective on the relationship between German minorities and the majority populations amongst which they found themselves during the First World War, this collection addresses how ’public opinion’ (the press, parliament and ordinary citizens) reacted towards Germans in their midst. The volume uses the experience of Germans to explore whether the War can be regarded as a turning point in the mistreatment of minorities, one that would lead to worse manifestations of racism, nationalism and xenophobia later in the twentieth century.

Key research outputs

Migrant City: a New History of London (London: Yale Univerity Press, 2020, 2022).

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Fish and Chips (London: Reaktion, 2014, 2022).

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Research interests/expertise

The history of immigration and interethnic relations; the history of food; the First World War; German history; the history of London; and the history of the Cypriot people.

Areas of teaching

European history; German history; the history of immigrants in Britain; nationalism, racism and genocide in twentieth century Europe

Qualifications

BA History, Ph.D History

²ÝÁñÊÓƵ taught

Panikos teaches on the following undergraduate modules

Ideology, War and Society in the 20th Century 

Multicultural Societies in History

Nation, Empire and Revolution in the 19th Century 

Honours and awards

My numerous research projects have been funded, over many decades, by the following bodies, in some cases on several occasions: the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the British Academy; the Gerda Henkel Foundation; the Higher Education Innovation Fund; the Leventis Foundation; the Leverhulme Trust; the Royal Historical Society; and the Scouloudi Foundation.

Membership of external committees

Reviews and assistant editor of Immigrants and Minorities

Member of the international editorial board of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Membership of professional associations and societies

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Projects

I am currently working on two projects.

1. 'The Cypriot Peasant', funded by the Leventis Foundation and ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ, which takes a new approach to the history of Cyprus by focusing upon the population of the island, rather than seeing the inhabitants as victims of ethnic conflict. 

2. 'Immigrants in Britain during the Long Nineteenth Century: A Documentary History of Realities and Perceptions' consisting of four volumes commissioned by Routledge. 

 

Current research students

Karl Arthur, 'Sedition and State Overwatch: Radicalism, Racial Politics and Britain’s Black Communities'.

Danielle La Scala, 'The Burger in Britain: A Symbol of Americana'

Externally funded research grants information

2020-22: €6,000 from the Leventis Foundation for a project on 'The Cypriot Peasant'.

2016-17: £5,980 from the British Academy for a project on ‘Real Londoners: Immigration and the Making of London’.

2016: £9,474 from the AHRC for a project on ‘Knockaloe in Local, National and Global Context’

2014-15: €13,000 from Gerda Henkel Foundation for a project with Stefan Manz (Aston) on ‘Interning German “Enemy Aliens” in the British Empire during World War I: Global, National and Local Perspectives’.

2014: €10,950 from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a project on ‘The Germans in India, c1800-1918’

2009-10: £7,480 from the British Academy to fund research on ‘Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian, Military and Naval Internees during the First World War’

Internally funded research project information

2012-15: £30,000 from the Higher Education Innovation Fund for a project on ‘Internment during the First World War: Remembering, Forgetting and Experiencing on a Local, National and Global Scale’.

Newspaper Articles

'The Top Ten Books about Londoners', Guardian, 8 April 2020.

'Cod's Gift to British Cuisine’, Jewish Chronicle, 4 December 2014.

Immigration Has Made Britain a Stronger Country’, Mirror (7 February 2011).

‘Pride and Prejudice: The Victorian Roots of a Very British Ambivalence to Immigration’, Independent (2 July 2010).

‘Make Mine a “Full Muslim”’, The Times Higher (29 June 2007).

PhD Supervision

I welcome applications for Ph.D supervision in the following areas: the First World War; the history of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany; Germany during the Second World War;  the history of food.

Vidoes and Podcasts

18 December 2024, ‘The Migrant Story’, for International Migrant Day in conjunction with Westminster Libraries and Archives, 

12 July 2023, 'Fish & Chips: The Unexpected Origins of Britain’s Favourite Dish', HistoryPodblast.com,  https://historypodblast.com/fish-chips-the-unexpected-origins-of-britains-favourite-dish/  

‘Migration and Diversity in Britain’, five online lectures produced by MASSOLIT, 13 March 2023, 

‘A Surprisingly un-British Story: The History of Fish and Chips’, Food Matters Live, 24 February 2023, 

‘The Cypriot Peasant at Home and Abroad’, bαhçές histories* of Cyprus, online interview, 23 November 2022, 

'Migrant City' presentation, interview and discussion at the 'Write Idea’ Literary Festival at Tower Hamlets Library, 5 November 2022, 

With Chris Zembe, ‘Decolonising History at ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ’, March 2022, 

BBC Radio 4, Thinking Allowed, ‘Migrants in London, 26 May 2021 

 ‘Migrant City: A New History of London’, Webinar to the London Society, 1 October 2020,  

 'Internees and Prisoners of War', The Home Front: The United Kingdom, 1914-1918, 24 October 2018, Chrome Radio, 

‘German Internees in Britain during the First World War’, BBC History Magazine Podcast, 14 March 2013, 



 

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