Professor Julian Wright

Secretary for Professional Engagement

Julian Wright is Professor of History at Northumbria University, where he was Head of Humanities (2017-22) and also acting Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education. Between 2004 and 2017, he worked at Durham University; and he was co-editor of the journal French History from 2006 to 2021.

Julian is a historian of modern Europe, particularly fascinated by the idea and experience of time in the present. With co-editor Allegra Fryxell, he recently brought out Time on a Human Scale: Experiencing the Present in Europe, 1860-1930 (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2021), which drew on cross-disciplinary perspectives to develop themes explored in his most recent monograph Socialism and the Experience of Time: Idealism and the Present in Modern France (OUP, 2017).

Julian’s new project on the experience of living ‘outside of time’ in the era of the Second World War asks how people tried to reconstruct ordinary temporal rhythms in difficult conditions, from those living under siege to prisoners in camps or people living in secrecy in occupied Europe.