Early life Plamper was born in
Laichingen in 1970 to Harald and Gudrun () in what was then
West Germany. He spent the majority of his childhood in
Tübingen, alongside periods in
Storrs,
United States. His paternal grandfather was a
Sudeten German from what had been the
Austro-Hungarian town of
Kaaden. In a 2017 interview with
Kritika, Plamper revealed that he had been sexually assaulted at the age of 10 by his uncle.
Education After obtaining a B.A. in history at
Brandeis University in 1992, Plamper did social work for
Memorial in
St. Petersburg as a volunteer, in lieu of military service. In 2001 he received his PhD in history at the
University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation under the supervision of
Yuri Slezkine on
Joseph Stalin's
personality cult. He subsequently taught at
Tübingen University and from 2008 to 2012 was a Dilthey Fellow of the
Fritz Thyssen Foundation at
Ute Frevert's
Center for the History of Emotions,
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, in
Berlin. From 2012 to 2021 he was a professor of history at
Goldsmiths, University of London, where he initiated the MA programmes in Black British and Queer history. Plamper held fellowships at
Historisches Kolleg in Munich,
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, and Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald. In his book
We Are All Migrants, Plamper refuted several anti-immigrant narratives which led
Jörg Baberowski to try to
cancel Plamper as co-editor of the series.
Death Plamper died of cancer on 30 November 2023, at the age of 53. == Selected works ==