Professor Patricia Clavin

Professor Patricia Clavin is Chair in Modern History at the University of Oxford. Her research and publications centre on the history of international and transnational relations in the Twentieth Century. She is especially interested in the relationship between international security and economic and financial stability, and the role played by international and regional organizations. It has led her to explore the history of Europe and the Great Depression, the origins and course of the Second World War, and the role of the major powers in the world economy.

Professor Clavin’s published work on this includes the books The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939 (London, 2000),  and The Failure of Economic Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, France and the US, 1931-36 (London, 1996). More recently, She has studied and published on the history of the League of Nations, and the organisations which succeeded it, which led to her publication Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920-1946 (Oxford, 2013), and ‘Internationalisms. A Twentieth-Century History’ (edited jointly with Glenda Sluga, Cambridge, 2017).

Her current research explores how economic, social and even environmental issues took on as much importance as familiar concerns of border protection and weapons’ control in the search for security after 1918. She is also developing a new project on food security.