Professor Jane Caplan

Jane Caplan was Professor of Modern European History and Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College and was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship in October 2012. She has worked mainly on the history of Nazi Germany and the history of the documentation of individual identity. 

Her publications include Written on the Body. The Tattoo in European and American History (Princeton University Press 2000); (with John Torpey) Documenting Individual Identity. The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (Princeton 2001); Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2008); and (with Nikolaus Wachsmann) Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany. The New Histories (Routledge, 2010). She has been an editor of History Workshop Journal, and of the advisory boards of German History, H-Net German, International Labor and Working-Class History, and L’Homme. Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft.

Her current research focusses on the proof and policing of identity in Nazi Germany. She was convenor of an international network on the history of identity documentation since 1500, funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust.