University of Richmond History Professor Michelle Kahn Named a National Humanities Center Fellow

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND — History professor Michelle Kahn has been named a National Humanities Center Fellow for 2025–26.

Founded in 1978, the National Humanities Center is an independent research institute dedicated to the advanced study of the humanities. Kahn is one of 32 fellows from around the world, who will each work on individual research projects and engage in collaborative programming with the National Humanities Center. 588 scholars applied for this fellowship.

A historian of modern Europe, Kahn’s scholarship focuses on 20th century Germany and far-right extremism. While serving as a NHC Fellow, Kahn will work on a new book examining translatlantic connections between neo-Nazis in Germany and the United States from the end of World War II through the 1990s, reframing the understanding of today’s global far-right.

“I am grateful to the National Humanities Center for the opportunity to take a full year of sabbatical leave to write this book,” said Kahn. “As far-right extremism surges across the globe today, it is incumbent upon historians to provide nuanced and contextualized investigations of how we got to this point.”

Kahn has taught at the University of Richmond since 2018. She was awarded the 2022 Chester Penn Higby Prize of the American Historical Association’s Modern European History Section, as well as the 2019 Fritz Stern Prize of the German Historical Institute. Her previous book, Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History, was published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press. She is also co-editor of a volume, Racism and Anti-Racism in Divided Germany, which is forthcoming with Cornell University Press.

###