Kiran Klaus Patel


Kiran Klaus Patel is a German historian. He holds a Chair at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Education and career

Patel studied history at the University of Freiburg and at Humboldt University of Berlin.
Since 2019, he has been teaching in Munich. He holds the Chair of Modern History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is also founding director of Project House Europe at LMU Munich, which promotes interdisciplinary research on the history of Europe. From 2011 to 2019 he held the Chair of European and Global History at Maastricht University following a professorship at the European University Institute in Florence from 2007 to 2011. He was visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at Sciences Po Paris. As John F. Kennedy Fellow he spent a year at Harvard University. Furthermore, he was awarded fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Freiburg.
His book, The New Deal: A Global History, which situates the role of the US during the 1930s and 1940s in a comparative and transnational context. The American Historical Review praised it, arguing that "Patel's story will become the definitive account“ and the monograph won the WHA Bentley Book Prize, awarded by the World History Association. Patel's Project Europe: A History challenged the narrative that the European Union was a successful force for peace from its inception. Project Europe has attracted a lot of media attention in Germany and internationally.
Patel is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Science, the Academy of Science and Literature, Mainz and the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Selected professional functions

Selected publications

Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933-1945.