Kiran Patel is a 2006-2007 Kennedy Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard, on sabbatical from his position as assistant professor of History at Humboldt University, Berlin. Next year, he will become professor of history at the European University Institute in Florence. His main fields of research and teaching are Modern European and Modern American History. Bridging communities of scholarly discussion in Germany, America and Britain, Dr. Patel advances the agenda of writing history from a transnational perspective.

Now that you have completed your Kennedy Fellowship at Harvard, what were the most outstanding aspects of the Harvard community that you encountered?

The obvious answer is Widener library. I can give you a short story. When I asked the librarians for a book that came out in Germany just two days before my inquiry, they promptly wrote back, apologized, and said they would have it shipped over. It arrived in ten days. That would be impossible in German university libraries. This kind of high quality service makes research so much easier.

Your first book was a comparative history of Germany and America in the interwar years. Have you found much support for comparative and transnational approaches in American academia? How does this compare with your experience in Germany?

That's a tricky question. Actually, I don't only compare Germany and America, but the Nazi regime and The New Deal era more specifically. I was struck by how interested American historians were. So many had an article by John A. Garraty from the 1970s in mind. And that always helped as a point of reference. Many in the USA didn't know anything on the Reich Arbeitsdienst of course, just as not many knew about the American Civilian Conservation Corps in Germany. Anyway, the openness was quite significant in both countries.

What does your next project focus on?

It is on Germany's role in developing policies for agricultural integration of the European Economic Community (EEC) from the 1950s to the 1970s. The main question deals with how the nation state was shaped and altered by processes of European integration. I look at state and non-state actors, and focus not only on political history, but also on cultural and social aspects.

Academic life in the present age seems to involve frequent travel, and the need for scholars to uproot themselves and move to new institutions, often in different countries. You have worked in Berlin, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and soon you will will take up a post at the European University Institute in Florence. Do you find there are any drawbacks to this way of life?

It is great to see several places, to become part of different academic communities, to encounter the national divisions that have shaped approaches to history writing, and to be exposed to people of different backgrounds. On the other hand, the main drawback is precisely the fact that it involves much traveling. And with a family, one becomes a little less flexible as the years go on.

How does the work culture in Cambridge compare to that in Berlin? How does American academic culture overlap with or diverge from its German counterpart more generally?

That's difficult. There are many interesting things going on here, as in Berlin. In Cambridge it's easier to be efficient if you want to, since Widener sits right there. If you go to talks, or discussions, they're always within one square mile at Harvard. I'd say academic life is more geographically concentrated here.