Jane Caplan

Jane Caplan (born 23 March 1945) is a British academic and historian specialising in Nazi Germany and the history of the documentation of individual identity. She is currently Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London, Visiting Professor of History at Gresham College and Emeritus Fellow at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford.

Education and career Caplan received her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from Somerville College, Oxford during the 1960s/70s. After receiving her doctorate in 1974, she taught at Cambridge University, where she worked as a research assistant to Arnold J. Toynbee. While at Cambridge, Caplan helped establish one of Britain's first courses in Women's Studies.

Caplan relocated to the United States, where she became visiting assistant professor at Columbia University in New York. She then moved to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, to become the Marjorie Walter Goodhart Professor of European History, a position she held until 2004. There she delivered a series of free public lectures in June 2014 collectively entitled "How do I know who you are? The History of Identity in Britain and Europe", following her research on individual identity.

Academic interests Caplan regards her main research field to be Nazi Germany and most of her publications have been on this period of history. She also holds an academic interest in the history of women, sexuality and the history of individual identity and identity documents. She is currently working on the administration of identification in Nazi Germany, especially civil registration. and she currently sits on the advisory board for German History, H-Net German, International Labor and Working Class History and L’Homme: Zeitschrift fur feministische Geschichtswissenschaft. She has also been Editor of History Workshop Journal and sat on the editorial board for American Historical Review, German History

Political life In May 2016, Caplan was one of 300 prominent historians, including Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson, who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian, telling voters that if they chose to leave the European Union on 23 June, they would be condemning Britain to irrelevance.

Caplan unexpectedly found herself thrust into the public spotlight due to her insightful commentary on the highly controversial topic of privatizing the Royal Mail. While walking down the streets in Oxford, Caplan was stopped by a reporter who sought her opinion on the matter. Unfazed by the unexpected encounter, Caplan passionately delved into an impromptu rant, eloquently articulating her views and raising critical points. Her unscripted outpouring was captured on camera and shared on YouTube.

Publications

A Study of History: A New Edition, Revised and Abridged with Arnold J. Toynbee (Oxford University Press, 1972). (Toynbee notes in the Foreword that "the captions to the illustrations have been drafted by Miss Caplan and approved by me" [p. 12].)

Nazi Germany

Gabriele Herz, The Women's Camp in Moringen. A Memoir of Imprisonment in Germany 1936-1937 (New York/Oxford Berghahn Books 2006) Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2008) Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany. The New Histories with Nikolaus Wachsmann (Routledge, 2010)

History of individual identity and identity documents

Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History (London/Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practises in the Modern World with John Torepy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)