Jonathan Fennell is Professor of the History of War and Society at King’s College London. After completing a Doctorate in Modern History at the University of Oxford, Jonathan worked as a management consultant in the City before joining the Defence Studies Department in 2009. Prior to this, he was awarded a joint honours History and Politics Degree at University College Dublin and studied History as an Erasmus Scholar at Université Lumière Lyon II.

Jonathan’s prize-winning research, which integrates military, socio-political, economic and cultural approaches, focuses on the global history of the Second World War as well as the history of Britain and the Commonwealth. It is situated in the academic discipline of History, but is informed by interdisciplinary approaches, especially those of the social sciences. Jonathan, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, has written three books and is co-editor of a fourth. He has published articles in major research journals and is a frequent contributor to the media on historical and contemporary security issues.

Jonathan’s most recent book, Collapse: A Global History of the Second World War, 1931-41, was published in the UK by Penguin (Viking) in 2026. It is the first of a new trilogy that explores the causes, conduct and consequences of the Greater Second World War. His previous book, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2019), won the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, 2020, and the Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal for the History of the British Army, 2020.

Jonathan is Co-Director of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War and Co-Founder and President of the international scholarly society, the Second World War Research Group.

Research

• History
• Conflict and society
• War and public philosophy
• Strategy and operations
• Mobilisation
• Combat morale and motivation
• Conflict and security
• Policy and society
• Politics
• International relations

Jonathan’s current research encompasses three distinct, but related, projects.

The first project is his new Trilogy on the Second World War, which sets out to develop a fresh account of the war that bridges the gap between traditional military histories and the mainstream political, social, cultural, economic and environmental histories of the period. The Trilogy aims to interrogate the personal alongside, and in the context of, the major complex events of the 1930s and 1940s. It is based on sources in fourteen languages and on research undertaken in over 50 archives around the world. It is published by Penguin (Viking) in the UK, Simon & Schuster in the US, CITIC in China, Spectrum in the Netherlands, Planeta in Spain, Local History in Ukraine, Utopia in Greece and Eksmo in Russia.

The second project, ‘Morale Analysis and Metrics’, is funded by the UK government Analysis for Science and Technology Research in Defence (ASTRID) framework. It is conducted in collaboration with the Operational Research Branch of the British Army’s Land Forces Command and aims to use historical data to explore the relationship between levels of morale in an army and combat effectiveness. By exploring the Northwest Europe and Mediterranean campaigns of the Second World War, the study develops an understanding of the importance of the variables that influence morale, and how they change over time and by context. It investigates and measures the variations in fighting power associated with morale and the predictive indicators of an army’s and enemy forces’ morale.

The third project, the ‘Forces Record Project’, is a pilot funded by the National Army Museum (NAM). By working with the NAM, The National Archives, and other key stakeholders, the project seeks to unlock the ‘hidden’ histories contained in the millions of British personnel records from the Second World War. Its aim, once fully funded, is to create the most in-depth profile yet undertaken of a people in armed service to the state – to provide the public, government, and historians with a better understanding of how the war was fought and won. It will produce scholarly outputs, data-driven lessons for contemporary security challenges, and, in the long-term, an interactive public platform (a ‘living memorial’ or ‘national asset’) that we hope will facilitate public engagement with the centenary of the war in 2039.

Jonathan’s previous research has also been supported by grant success: from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Australian Army’s History Unit. He is currently PI on a Collaborative Doctoral Award funded by the AHRC; the project, which is in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum, focuses on ‘Training in the British and Commonwealth Armies in the Second World War’.

Leadership

Since joining King’s, Jonathan has fulfilled a wide variety of academic leadership and administrative roles. He is currently president and co-founder of the Second World War Research Group (2014-Present) and Director of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War (SMHC) (2017-Present). He has previously served: on the SLT at DSD as Director of Research (2022-24); as Chair of the DSD MA Exam Board (2016-19); as DSD Lead for the 2021 History REF (2017-18 & 2020-21); and as a member of the School of Security Studies Research Ethics Panel (2012-19).

Teaching

Jonathan teaches modules on the Second World War, Modern British and Commonwealth History, War Studies, War and Society, International Relations and Ethics.

PhD Supervision

Professor Fennell is happy to supervise PhD students in the following broad subject areas:

• The Second World War
• War and Socio-Political Change
• War and Public Philosophy
• Twentieth Century British and Commonwealth History
• Strategy
• Morale and Motivation
• Military Doctrine
• Mobilisation

Publications

Jonathan’s publications include empirically grounded studies that make significant contributions to our understanding of the Second World War and the fields of military, social and political history. He has also engaged with the theoretical implications of his findings, with contributions to the fields of strategic studies and war and defence studies.

Books:

• A New World: A Global History of the Second World War, 1944-49 (London, New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Madrid, Kyiv, Athens and Moscow: Penguin (Viking), Simon & Schuster, Spectrum, CITIC, Planeta, Local History, Utopia and Eksmo, Forthcoming 2031).
• The Burning Furnace: A Global History of the Second World War, 1942-44 (London, New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Madrid, Kyiv, Athens and Moscow: Penguin (Viking), Simon & Schuster, Spectrum, CITIC, Planeta, Local History, Utopia and Eksmo, Forthcoming 2029).
• Collapse: A Global History of the Second World War, 1931-41 (London, New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Madrid, Kyiv, Athens and Moscow: Penguin (Viking), Simon & Schuster, Spectrum, CITIC, Planeta, Local History, Utopia and Eksmo, 2026).
• The Peoples’ War: The Second World War in Socio-Political Perspective, Alex Wilson, Richard Hammond and Jonathan Fennell (eds.), (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).
• Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
• Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign: The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Book Chapters:

• ‘“No Man Twice Before Every Man Once”: Social Structures and the Culture of War in the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 1939-1948’, in Peter Cooke and John Crawford (eds.), Heavy and Continuous Sacrifice: New Zealand, Its Allies and the Second World War (Wellington: New Zealand Military History Committee, 2024).
• ‘Conservatism, Radicalism and Global Conflict: Britain’s War, 1939-1945’, in Paul Bartrop (ed.), The Routledge History of the Second World War (London: Routledge, 2021).
• ‘Legitimacy, Consent, and the Mobilization of the British and Commonwealth Armies during the Second World War’, in Douglas E. Delaney, Mark Frost and Andrew L. Brown (eds.), Manpower and Armies of the British Empire during the two World Wars (Cornell University Press, 2021).
• ‘The British Army in WWII’, in D. Showalter (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Military History (Oxford University Press, 2020).
• ‘South African Veterans and the Institutionalisation of Apartheid in South Africa’, in Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (eds.), War Veterans and the World After 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory (London: Routledge, 2018).
• ‘Reevaluating Combat Cohesion: The British Second Army in The Northwest Europe Campaign of the Second World War’, in Anthony King (ed.), Frontline: Combat and Cohesion in the Twenty-First Century(Oxford University Press, 2015).

Articles:

• ‘Applied Conflict History and the Reflective Practitioner’, Ares & Athena, Issue 14, February 2019.
• ‘Soldiers and Social Change: The Forces Vote in the Second World War and New Zealand’s Great Experiment in Social Citizenship’, English Historical Review, Vol. 132, Issue. 554 (2017).
• ‘In Search of the ‘X’ Factor: Morale and the Study of Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 37, Nos. 6-7 (2014).
• ‘Morale and Combat Performance: An Introduction’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 37, Nos. 6-7 (2014).
• ‘Courage, Cowardice and Combat Performance: Eighth Army and the Crisis in North Africa, 1942’, War in History, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2013).
• ‘Air Power and Morale in the North African Campaign of the Second World War’, Air Power Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2012).

Select Media Articles:

• ‘The World War Before the World War’, Aspects of History, August 2026.
• ‘Booklist 2020-21’, The Society for Army Historical Research, November 2020.
• ‘VJ Day: Turning the Tide in the East’, BBC History Magazine, Issue 22, August 2020.
• ‘The World Redrawn: The Allied victory that followed the Normandy landings wasn’t merely a military triumph – it unleashed powers of change around the globe’, BBC World Histories Magazine, Issue 16, June/July 2019.
• ‘The Furlough Mutiny and the Struggle for Cassino in the Second World War’, Defence-in-Depth Blog, March 2019.
• ‘VJ Day: Turning the Tide in the East’, BBC History Magazine, Issue 22, August 2019.
• ‘The World Redrawn: The Allied victory that followed the Normandy landings wasn’t merely a military triumph – it unleashed powers of change around the globe’, BBC World Histories Magazine, Issue 16, June/July 2019.
• ‘The Furlough Mutiny and the Struggle for Cassino in the Second World War’, Defence-in-Depth, March 2019.
• ‘The Story of the State is Far From an Easy Tale of Good Versus Evil’, The Irish Times, 7 February 2019.
• ‘The Ordinary Soldiers' War’, Bookbrunch, 7 February 2019.
• ‘The Defect that Brexit and MAGA Share’, History News Network, 16 January 2019.

Visit Professor Jonathan Fennell's PURE profile here.