In collaboration with colleagues from Newcastle, Sara Jones (Modern Languages) has been awarded an AHRC standard grant for the project “Knowing the Secret Police: Secrecy and Knowledge in East German Society” (FEC, approx., £959,000).

The project overturns the approach of existing research to ask not what the "all-powerful" Stasi knew about society, but what and how East Germans knew about the secret police. It also includes a significant impact dimension working with political foundations, archives, museums and schools. Sara will be CI on the bid (looking at literary networks and representations), the PI is Anselma Gallinat (Newcastle, looking at church and social networks) and Joanne Sayner (now Newcastle) is the second CI (looking at political networks). The project will start in October 2018.