Dissertation

• since October 2015

Ph.D. Candidate at the Joint Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program „Human Rights Under Pressure“ | Freie Universität Berlin / Hebrew University Jerusalem (supervisor Prof. Arnd Bauerkämper)

Stipends

• 2004-2010

Scholarship of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation

• 2007-2008

Scholarship of „Studienkollegs zu Berlin“

Professional Experience

• May 2012 – August 2015

research assistant at the DFG project „Collective Memory as a Basis for Identification with Europe. Interpretations of the Past between Globalization, Europeanization, Renationalization and Hybridization"

• 2009-2010

student assistant at the office of frmer Federal President Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker, Berlin

• 2008

student assistant at the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin

• 2008-2009

Internship at the capital office of the Körber foundation, Department for International Affairs, Berlin

Studies

• August 2011

Magister Thesis: „Erinnerungskultur und ‚Geschichtspolitik‘ in Polen – Die Konstruktion des Erinnerungsorts Katyn und seine Bedeutung für die polnische publizistische Debatte 2005 – 2010“ am Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut der Freien Universität Berlin

• 2004-2011

Studies in modern history, political science and Slavic Studies in Freiburg i. Br., Potsdam and at FU Berlin

• CIEE Global Institute Berlin, "J-Term", Januar 2019, "Holocaust Studies" (as instructor, in cooperation with Leah Rauch)

• CIEE Global Institute Berlin, fall Term 2018, "Holocaust Studies" (ass teaching assistant)

• University of Siegen, summer semester 2014, Seminar: "memory studies, post-colonial studies und transnationale Geschichte - wie Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats gemacht wird" (together with Clara Frysztacka)

Research Interests

• contemprorary European history, transnational history

• 20th century processes of transitions and democratization

• European social history

• history of human rights

• European memory cultures

Dissertation Project

"Translating Repression into Rights. Labor Protest and Democratic Opposition Movements in Francoist Spain and State Socialist Poland, 1960-1990"

(submitted in September 1990)

Writing her PhD in comparative contemporary European history, Anna focuses on the realm of labor in two authoritarian regimes on the semi-periphery of Europe: Francoist Spain and state Socialist Poland. In this context, she sheds light on the years between 1960-1990 and highlights different phases of oppositional activism.

Spanish and Polish workers both lacked the right to join and form independent trade unions, the right to free assembly and association, and the right to strike. They constantly protested against these conditions whereby they were supported by other social groups.

Apart from political repression, workers faced concrete problems in their everyday work life, including low salaries, extra working hours, incompetent managements, and deficits in safety and hygiene. In this context, (partly illegal) magazines for workers emerged. Being an alternative to the state press system, these independent publications provided new arenas for exchanging experiences. They advertised strike actions all across the country, called for united action and explained national legislation and globally binding labor rights and norms. These “alternative publications”, constitute the analytical base for this project.

Spanish and Polish workers both were supported by intellectuals being either left-leaning or Catholic or both and engaging in the publishing of alternative press. The workers’ struggle served as a trajectory for broader debates on democracy and is regarded as of being one of the major factors of democratization processes. Having in mind broader contemporary European and global history processes, Anna considers Spanish and Polish workers and their allies to be symptoms of transnationally entangled, anti-authoritarian social dynamics that shaped the decades between 1960 and 1990.

In this context, Anna explores how repression and everyday conflicts were connected with labor rights and the concept of democracy in two authoritarian regimes and finds answers to the following research questions:

•       Which were the most pressing demands of workers and their allies? How were they translated into political activism?

•       Which role did internationally binding labor norms and human rights play in this context?

By comparing workers’ protest and related debates in Francoist Spain and in state socialist Poland, Anna’s study offers an alternative narrative to the traditional East-West divide in European historiography, conceiving the non-democratic experience of the South and East of Europe as an alternative model of development of the 20th century. This way, the history of state socialisms but also the Francoist dictatorship are not regarded as ‘deviations’ or ‘exceptions’ but become part of a broader European history narrative highlighting the diversity of socio-political developments in the sense of “multiple modernities” or “multiple Europes”.

Monographies

• Jürgen Gerhards, Lars Breuer & Anna Delius, Kollektive Erinnerungen europäischer Bürger im Kontext von Transnationalisierungsprozessen. Deutschland, Großbritannien, Polen und Spanien im Vergleich. Wiesbaden, 2016.

Anthology Contributions

Peer-Reviewed

• (Submitted, forthcoming 2020). Writing (for Workers: Repression and day-to-day problems in alternative workers' magazines in state socialist Poland and in Francoist Spain in the 1960s and 1970s. In: Rory Archer / Goran Musić (Eds.) Labor. Studies in Working-Class History. (Special Issue)
• Universal Rights or Everyday Necessities? Translating Human Rights between Local Workers and Transnational Activism in late 1970s Poland, in: Hella Dietz, James Mark & Ned Richardson-Little (Eds.), East Central Europe (Special Issue): Socialism and Human Rights in East-Central Europe since 1945. Leiden: Brill.

• Breuer, L./ Delius, A. (2017). '1989 in European Vernacular Memory'. In: East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 13, No. 3, S. 456 – 478.

• Büttner, S. / Delius, A. (2015). World Culture in European Memory Politics? New European memory agents between epistemic framing and political agenda setting, in: Journal for Contemporary European Studies, 23 (3), 391-404.

Other

• Delius, Anna: Rezension zu: Arbeitskreis Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Köln  (Hrsg.): Quellen zur Geschichte der Menschenrechte. , in: H-Soz-Kult, 17.02.2018.
• Delius, Anna: Die ganze Welt schaut aufs Ghetto: Wie Polens Regierung per Gesetz versucht, die Geschichte zu vereinfachen, Kommentar, Berliner Zeitung vom 8.2.2018.
• Tagungsbericht: Human Rights after 1945 in the Socialist and Post-Socialist World, 03.04.2016 – 05.04.2016 Warsaw, in: H-Soz-Kult, 25.06.2016.

• Breuer, L./ Delius, A. (2015).  Jak jest zrobiona pamięć wernakularna? Wybrane wyniki międzynarodowego badania w Niemczech, Polsce, Hiszpanii i Wielkiej Brytanii [Wie wird Erinnerung von unten gemacht? Ausgewählte Ergebnisse einer internationalen Studie in Deutschland, Polen, Spanien und Großbritannien], in: Kultura Współczesna [Kultur der Gegenwart], 3/2015, pp. 27-36. [auf Polnisch]

• Riebau, A. M. / Leidinger, A. (2013). Wer sind ‚wir’ in Europa? Doppelte Staatsbürgerschaft und Einbürgerung im deutsch-polnischen Vergleich, in: Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik, Heft 10, S. 379-385.

• Leidinger, A. et al. (2009). Wie wird der wirtschaftliche Transformationsprozess Georgiens von Europa beeinflusst? Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel des georgischen Weins, in: Jürgen Trabant, Studienkolleg zu Berlin (Ed.): Projekt Junges Europa 5, Hannover, S. 95-126.

Presentations

• "Ordinary Europeans' views on 1989", Vortrag im Rahmen der Konferenz "Genealogies of Memory. Collective vs Collected Memories. 1989-91 from an Oral History Perspective" an der Universität Warschau, 6.-8. November 2014, Warschau, Polen. [Zusammen mit Lars Breuer]

• “European Memory Politics as a World-Cultural Project: Transnational Regulation, Cosmopolitan Rhetoric, and Professional Framing”, Vortrag auf der Konferenz der European Sociological Association, 28.-31. August 2013, Turin, Italien. [Zusammen mit Sebastian Büttner]

• „Wer sind ‚wir’ in Europa? Doppelte Staatsbürgerschaft und Einbürgerung im deutsch-polnischen Vergleich“, Vortrag im Rahmen der Nachwuchswissenschaftler-Tagung „Staatsbürgerschaft, Einbürgerung und Partizipation: Brauchen wir eine neue Kultur der Anerkennung?“ der Westfälischen-Wilhelms-Universität Münster, des Bundesamts für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Nürnberg und des Landesministeriums für Arbeit, Integration und Soziales des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Münster, 18./ 19. Juli 2013. [witht Anne Meike Riebau]

Translations

• [from Polish] von Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof und Małgorzata (2011). Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt in der polnischen Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskultur, in: Anna Kaminsky, Dietmar Müller & Stefan Troebst (Hg.): Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt in den europäischen Erinnerungskulturen, Göttingen, S. 219-238.