The Leo Baeck Institute London warmly welcomes its new director, Dr Joseph Cronin. Dr Cronin took up the post on 1 September and we look forward to a dynamic new era for the Institute under his leadership.
Dr Cronin specialises in research into Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust. After graduating with a BA and MA from Durham University, Joseph conducted his PhD at the University of London between 2012 and 2016 with a LBI studentship in Modern Jewish History. During that time, he was fortunate to meet many of the institute’s former directors and chairpersons, including Arnold Paucker and Peter Pulzer. Joseph’s first monograph, published in 2019, is titled Russian-speaking Jews in Germany’s Jewish communities, 1990–2005.
As a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute London, he was co-investigator for a project looking at German-speaking Jews who found refuge in colonial India during the 1930s and 40s. He has taught at King’s College London and, since 2019, has been Lecturer in Modern German History at Queen Mary University of London.
He has appeared in the media, including on BBC Radio 3 and in a major television documentary. He is currently completing a British Academy-funded project on the persistence of Nazi language in postwar Germany, and is working on his second book, about Jewish life in the Free City of Danzig (1920–39). He is particularly interested in the ways that German-Jewish history can maintain its relevance to the problems of the present time.