Dr Richard Millington
Programme Leader German / Lecturer in German
I started working at the University of Chester in 2012. I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Liverpool, where I also worked as a University Teacher. I have also worked as a Foreign News Editor for an international media company in Liverpool. I was in that post for seven years.
I run the the X/Twitter account EastGermanyOnline (@DDROnline). I post regularly about my research, as well as on East Germany in general. You can also find me on Bluesky Social.
I teach a range of modules including ones on German language and grammar, European politics, culture, film and literature. My teaching interests include contemporary German society and politics, memory and its role in modern societies, and the Cold War in Germany.
My current research investigates crime and criminality in East Germany. My doctoral research focused on East German citizens' experiences and memories of the uprising of 17 June 1953 in East Germany. I have more general research interests in everyday life in dictatorships, oral history, and memory studies. I have also published on the French Resistance, and slavery and the British Empire.
Monographs
State, Society and Memories of the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in the GDR (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Journal articles
‘The People’s Sport: Petty Theft in the German Democratic Republic, 1963-1985’, East Central Europe 50 (2023), 14-36.
‘“He didn’t really talk about it”: The (re)construction and transmission of a Free French past’, Modern and Contemporary France 29 (2021), 325-39.
‘Screening Dissent: The Uprising of 17 June 1953 in East German Film’, Historical Journal of Film, Television and Radio, 41 (2021), 462-76.
'State Power and '‘Everyday Criminality'’ in the German Democratic Republic, 1961–1989', German History, 38 (2020), 440–460.
‘The Politics of Anniversaries: Commemorating 17 June 1953 in the United Germany, 1990-2018’, German Life and Letters, 73 (2020), 401-19.
‘"Crime has no chance": The Discourse of Everyday Criminality in the Neue Berliner Illustrierte, 1961-1989', Central European History 50.1 (2017), 59-85.
‘The Limits of Control: The “Public Discourse” about the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in Novels and Films in the German Democratic Republic’, German History 31 (2013), 42-60.
Book chapters
‘Der Aufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 im kollektiven Gedächtnis und Bewusstsein der Magdeburger vor 1990’ in Sachsen und Anhalt. Band 35, ed. by Chrisoph Volkmar et al (Halle/Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2023), pp. 231-269.
‘Remembering the uprising of 17 June 1953’, in 20 Years On: Remembering the German Democratic Republic, ed. by David Clarke and Ute Wölfel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 157-169.
Magazine Articles
‘Could the Soviet Union have survived?’, History Today, September 2020.
‘Who’s afraid of the Stasi?’, History Today, August 2020.
‘Day of Dissent in the DDR, History Today (July, 2018).
'The Fall of the Berlin Wall', History Today, (November, 2014).
Media
Live talks
State, Society and Memories of the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in the GDR.
The Stasi – Anatomy of an Investigation with Dr Richard Millington.
Ostalgie - East German Nostalgia - An Analysis by Dr Richard Millington.
Cold War Conversations Podcast, 'Episode 6 – The 1953 East German Uprising with Dr Richard Millington.
- BA (French and German)
- MA (Modern Languages)
- PhD (German), University of Liverpool