Richard Millington

Research Interests

I am a historian of East Germany. My current research project focuses on ‘everyday’ crime and criminality in East Germany. The East German regime claimed that the creation of a communist society and the concomitant removal of capitalist structures would lead to the total eradication of crime.

This did not, however, prove to be the case. I am interested in discourses of crime, as well as theories about criminal motives, and am enthusiastic about collaborating with scholars with a background in criminology.

Latest / Proudest Achievement

In 2019 I was awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant to conduct research into petty theft in East Germany. This criminal offence was epidemic in East Germany and was a constant thorn in the side of the regime. I intend to use the grant to research the work of the ‘Citizens’ Arbitration Commissions’ in East Germany. These commissions dealt with instances of low-level crime in East German towns and cities.

In 2018, I created and managed the ‘live history’ Twitter project ’17. Juni 1953: live’. This project was based on my PhD research and recreated the uprising of 17 June 1953 in East Germany. Seven fictional East German citizens tweeted throughout the day as if the uprising were happening in real time in 2018. The project was featured in the German media and led to the discovery of previously unseen photographs of the uprising.

Further information

In 2014, I published the monograph ‘State, Society and Memories of the Uprising of 17 June 1953 in the GDR’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014). You can find my ‘live history’ Twitter project here: www.17.juni1953live.wordpress.com and you can follow my research on Twitter via EastGermanyOnline (@DDROnline).