Robert Mark Spaulding

Candidate statement

Robert Mark Spaulding (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1989) is Professor of History at UNC Wilmington. He was a Visiting Professor at Peking University in 2004. Prof. Spaulding's research and teaching interests center on German, European, and global political economy, particularly trade, and international relations. He teaches regularly at all levels of the curriculum from HST 101 to graduate courses on Weimar and Nazi Germany. His book Osthandel and Ostpolitik from Bismarck to Adenauer (Berghahn, 1997) was a finalist for the AHA’s prize as best book in European International History. He has just completed a short book for undergraduates, The Global Medieval: Trade and Contact in Four Great Ports of the Afro-Eurasian World, 1000-1500 (Cognella, 2020). His essays on German, European, and global trade have appeared in numerous journals, including Agricultural History, Central European History, Diplomatic History, the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, and in several important collections such as the Oxford Handbook of the Cold War. He has also published in International Organization, the leading journal of international relations. He organized the 40th anniversary forum for Mack Walker’s German Home Towns that appeared in Central European History (September 2014). He was Guest Editor of the special thematic issue “New Research on Cities and Towns in Central Europe” for German History (September 2017). In 2006 and 2020 he was an invited participant at week-long seminars at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. His research has been funded by the DAAD, the Council for European Studies, the Ford Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. He has presented, moderated, and commented at many GSA panels since his first GSA presentation in 1993. Prof. Spaulding was a member of the GSA Program Committee in 2015 and 2016.