Momentum delegate Marcus Colla

I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2019, with a thesis that looked at the strange afterlife of the Prussian state. A monograph based on this research appeared with Oxford University Press in 2022 under the title "Communists and Kings". 

After obtaining my PhD, I worked as Departmental Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford, before returning to Cambridge as the Mark Kaplanoff Research Fellow in History at Pembroke College. I joined UiB in February 2024.   

My principal current project concerns the history of Esperanto in Cold War Europe – a topic that I embed in a wider story about the uses of common languages as social and political tools. In addition, I have published articles on themes concerning architecture, heritage, time and memory in communist Eastern Europe. Other research interests of mine include the history of 'National Bolshevism' before 1945, the Revolutions of 1989, the work of the German historian and theorist Reinhart Koselleck, and the history of "chronopolitics" – or the “politics of time”. 

I also comment on contemporary politics at https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/contributors/articles/marcus-colla and frequently review books for various publications.