Elisabeth Piller
Elisabeth Piller is PI of BLOCKADE and Assistant Professor of Transatlantic and North American History at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She has worked in Freiburg since 2020, following postdoctoral positions in Dublin and Oslo.
Dr. Piller leads BLOCKADE’s Freiburg-based team, which studies the social and public dimensions of blockades. Case studies include the role of women’s mobilization in creating blockade resilience, the construction of myth narratives about the First World War’s alleged ‘hunger blockade’, the heroization of blockade runners across societies, and the idea and practice of humanitarian corridors across blockades in the twentieth century.
Dr. Piller is an expert in the history of humanitarianism, public diplomacy and transatlantic relations. She is the author of the award-winning book Selling Weimar. German Public Diplomacy and the United States, 1918-1933 (2021) and has published articles in leading journals such as Diplomatic History, Journal of Contemporary History and The English Historical Review. She has co-edited special issues of Contemporary European History (2021) and International History Review (2024) as well as a collection on Humanitarianism and the Greater War, 1914-1924 (2023). She is currently completing her second book US Humanitarians, a Hungry Europe and the Making of the American Century, examining US food aid to Europe during and after the Second World War.