Dr Jonathan Boff FRHistS

Dr Jonathan Boff

Department of History
Reader in Modern History

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 5512
Email
j.f.boff@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@jonathanboff
View my research portal
Address
Arts Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

As a historian, I am primarily interested in how institutions and individuals respond to the challenges of war. I believe that this is best studied using an approach which is both comparative and cross-disciplinary.

Qualifications

  • PhD War Studies, King’s College London 
  • MA History of Warfare, King’s College London 
  • BA PPE, Merton College, Oxford University

Biography

I joined the University of Birmingham in September 2011 after completing my PhD at King’s College London. Before returning to academia in 2005 I spent twenty years working in the private sector, much of the time in Asia.

Teaching

Undergraduate 

  • First Year: Practising History
  • Second Year Core: Introduction to Strategy and Operational Art 
  • Second Year Option: Britain and the Second World War 
  • Second Year Option: Britain and France at War, 1793-1815
  • Third Year Core: Writing the History of War 
  • Third Year Option: Warfare at Sea from the Armada to D-Day 
  • Third Year Special Subject: The British Army on the Western Front 

  • Third Year Special Subject: The Weary Titan: Britain, her Empire and the World, 1897-1919

Postgraduate 

  • Convenor: MA First World War Studies
  • Convenor: MA Second World War Studies
  • Convenor: MA Military History by distance learning
  • Modules taught: Research Skills; Higher Direction of the War; Experience of the War

Postgraduate supervision

I am happy to supervise projects on the military history of the two world wars, on British strategy from Gladstone to Churchill, and on morale and combat motivation. I am particularly keen to encourage projects with a comparative/international dimension.

Current projects I am supervising include:

Aimee Fox-Godden, 'Inter-Theatre Learning in the British Army during the First World War'
Andrew Duncan, 'The Training and Ethos of British Officers before the First World War'
Nick Beeching, 'Worcester and the Worcestershire regiment, 1914-18

Find out more - our PhD History  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

My current research focuses on the British and German armies and the development of modern warfare, 1914-1945, and on the connection between morale and military effectiveness.

I am working on a book for Oxford University Press on the Western Front, 1914-18, as seen through the eyes of one of the most senior German generals, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.

In addition, I am working on British military attitudes to the use of extreme violence in the first half of the twentieth century, and on the role of materialism in causing wars.  

Other activities

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Boff, J 2018, Haig's Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany's war on the Western Front. Oxford University Press. <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/haigs-enemy-9780199670468>

Boff, J 2012, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: the British third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918. vol. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Article

Boff, J & Philpott, W 2019, 'Introduction: Transforming War, 1914-1918', British Journal of Military History, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.bjmh.v5i2.1310

Boff, J 2019, 'Two Battles at Le Cateau, 1914 and 1918: The Transformation of War', British Journal of Military History, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 19=39. https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.bjmh.v5i2.1311

Boff, J 2014, 'The morale maze : the German Army in late 1918', The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 37, no. 6-7, pp. 855-878. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.846854

Boff, J 2012, '‘Logistics during the Hundred Days Campaign, 1918: British Third Army’', Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 89.

Boff, J 2010, 'Combined Arms during the Hundred Days Campaign, August-November 1918', War in History, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 459-478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344510376456

Boff, J 2009, 'Air/land integration in the 100 Days', Royal Air Force Air Power Review, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 77-88.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Boff, J 2018, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, the German Command and Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914-1915. in M Glencross & J Rowbotham (eds), Monarchies and the Great War. 1st edn, Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 67-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89515-4

Boff, J 2018, The British Army in 1918. in M Strohn (ed.), 1918: Winning the War, Losing the War. Osprey Publishing, Oxford, pp. 97-127.

Boff, J 2017, Vorsprung durch taktik? Das britische Heer und die Materialschlacht 1916. in C Stachelbeck (ed.), Materialschlachten 1916: Ereignis, Bedutung, Erinnerung. Zeitalter der Weltkrieg edn, Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh, Paderborn, pp. 97-110.

Chapter

Boff, J 2013, ‘Command Culture and Complexity: Third Army during the Hundred Days’. in G Sheffield & P Gray (eds), Changing War: The Genesis of Modern Warfare . Birmingham War Studies, Bloomsbury Academic, London. <http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/changing-war-9781441156334/>

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

 

  • Armed forces policy
  • Commemoration
  • Military archives