Professor Sabine Lee

Department of History
Professor in Modern History

Contact details

Address
Arts Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Having graduated from the University of Düsseldorf with a degree in mathematics, history and philosophy I completed an M.Phil in International Relations and PhD in Modern History at the University of Cambridge. I took up a lectureship in European history at the University of Hull in 1993 before joining the Department of Modern History here at Birmingham in 1994.

Biography

Sabine Lee is a Professor in Modern History at the University of Birmingham. After studying history, mathematics and philosophy at Düsseldorf University, which she completed with a Staatsexamen in 1989, she obtained an M.Phil in International Relations at the University of Cambridge in 1990. She continued her studies at Cambridge with a project on Anglo-German Relations after the Second World War under David Reynolds. This resulted in a doctoral dissertation which was submitted in 1992.

In January 1993, she joined the Department of European Studies at the University of Hull as Lecturer in Modern History. Since September 1994 she has been at the Department of Modern History here at Birmingham.

Postgraduate supervision

Listed below are the fields in which Sabine Lee is able to offer supervision of research postgraduates.

Children Born of War; Children and War
History of UN Peacekeeping
Conflict-related gender-based violence
Social consequences of war and conflict
20th century British history
20th century international relations
19th and 20th century history of science (particularly mathematics and physics)
20th German history


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

Research

Sabine’s current research is mainly concerned with the social consequences of war.  A focus has been gender-based violence in war and children born of war, that is children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers in conflict and post-conflict situations.  She is currently coordinator of CHIBOW, an international interdisciplinary and intersectoral network on Children Born of War and PI on an AHRC-funded network and research project on peacekeeper fathered children in Haiti.

In collaboration with Susan Bartels (Queen’s University, Kingston/Ontario) and Bob McKelvey (Oregon Health and Science University, Portland) she has recently completed a Wellcome Trust-funded research project comparing the life courses of Amerasians in the US and Vietnam.  Sabine has published widely on the social consequences of war, human rights of children born of war, specific case studies and historical comparisons of such children throughout the 20th century, most recently in her monograph Children Born of War in the Twentieth Century.

Past research

After earlier research on refugees and expellees and their organisations in post-war Germany, Sabine turned to 20th century international relations.  Here she focussed in particular on British-German relations after 1945 and post-war European integration and co-operation.  More recently she has studied some questions of 20th century scientific developments and the interplay between science and politics.

Another research focus has been the history of 20th century science, and in particular physics.  Sabine has published a scholarly edition of the private and scientific correspondence of Rudolf Peierls, co-edited a volume on the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction and the Nuclear Many-body Problem and a Festschrift for the American theoretical physicist Gerald E. Brown.  She has also published an edition of the complete correspondence of Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe and Rudolf Peierls.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Lee, S, Bartels, S & Glaesmer, H (eds) 2023, Children Born of War: Challenges and Opportunities at the Intersection of War Tension and Post-War Justice and Reconstruction. Frontiers Research Topics, Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.3389/978-2-83251-785-7

Article

Vahedi, L, Lee, S, Etienne, S, Lusamba, S & Bartels, SA 2024, 'Peacekeepers and Local Women and Girls: A Comparative Mixed-Methods Analysis of Local Perspectives from Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo', International Peacekeeping. https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2024.2323537

Hellweg, N, Glaesmer, H, Stelzl-Marx, B, Lee, S & Kaiser, M 2024, 'Psychosocial consequences of growing up as Austrian occupation children in post-World-War II Austria', European Journal of Psychotraumatology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2389019. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2024.2389019

Petz, JF, Nguya, G, Nguba, MB, Goebel, A, Lee, S & Bartels, SA 2024, '‘At the end of their relationship, that man offered her a house’: Qualitatively exploring Congolese women’s agency in navigating sexual relations with UN peacekeepers within the context of a patriarchal setting in eastern DRC', Global Public Health, vol. 19, no. 1, 2291698. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2023.2291698

Maskery, M, Walker, M, Glaesmer, H, Etienne, S, Lee, S & Bartels, S 2023, 'Peacekeeper-perpetrated sexual exploitation and abuse, and life satisfaction: A cross-sectional study in Haiti', Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health, vol. Special Issue 2023. <https://www.gjmedph.com//Uploads/O2_Special_Issue_2023.pdf>

Lee, S, McKelvey, B & Bartels, S 2022, '"I grew up longing to be what I wasn't": mixed-methods analysis of Amerasians' experiences in the United States and Vietnam', Frontiers in Political Sciences, vol. 4, 865717. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2022.865717

Wagner, K, Tasker, H, Vahedi, L, Bartels, S & Lee, S 2022, 'Born between war and peace: Situating peacekeeper-fathered children in research on children born of war', Frontiers in Political Science, vol. 4, 945617. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2022.945617

Bartels, S, Fraulin, G, Etienne, S, Wisner, SC & Lee, S 2022, 'Cholera in the time of MINUSTAH: experiences of community members affected by cholera in Haiti', International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 9, 4974. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19094974

Lee, S & Glaesmer, H 2022, 'Forgotten: children born of war', Ethics and Armed Forces, vol. 2022, no. 1. <http://www.ethikundmilitaer.de/en/full-issues/20221-women-peace-security-the-long-road-to-gender-justice/lee-glaesmer-forgotten-children-born-of-war/>

Wagner, K, Glaesmer, H, Bartels, SA, Weber, S & Lee, S 2022, 'Presence of the absent father: perceptions of family among peacekeeper-fathered children in the Democratic Republic of Congo', Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02293-2

Wagner, K, Bartels, S, Weber, S & Lee, S 2022, 'UNsupported: the needs and rights of children fathered by UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo', Human Rigthts Review, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 305-332. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-021-00652-y

Wagner, K, Bartels, S, Weber, S & Lee, S 2022, '‘White child gone bankrupt’: —the intersection of race and poverty in youth fathered by UN peacekeepers', Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09772-7

Lee, S 2022, '“Crucial? Helpful? Practically nil?” Reality and perception of Britain’s contribution to the development of nuclear weapons during the Second World War', Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 19-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2022.2041805

Vahedi, L, Stuart, H, Etienne, S, Wisner, SC, Lee, S & Bartels, S 2022, '“It’s because we are ‘loose girls’ that’s why we had children with MINUSTAH soldiers”: a qualitative analysis of stigma experienced by peacekeeper-fathered children and their mothers in Haiti', Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211072178

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Lee, S 2023, Unintended Consequences or Desired Outcome? Children Born of War and their Role in National Rebirth. in K Theidon, D Mazurana & D Anumol (eds), Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation. Oxford University Press, pp. 56-86. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197648315.003.0004

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

20thcentury international relations; contemporary German history and politics;European integration; post-war British-German relations;  20th century history of science; conflict and security studies; consequences of war; children born of war

Alternative contact number available for this expert: contact the press office

Expertise

Conflict-related Gender-based violence

Children born of war 

Peacekeeping

Development

Conflict resolution

International agreements

European integration