Dr. Stefan Wiecki

Dr. Wiecki – Curriculum Vitae »

Education Background

M.A., Ph.D., Brandeis University
B.A., Free University in Berlin

Research Fields/ Areas of Specialty/Teaching

• Modern Europe
• Modern Germany

About Dr. Wiecki

Before joining the PC History Department in the fall of 2008, I taught modern European history for two years at Wellesley College. I received my undergraduate degree in history and political science from the Free University Berlin in Germany. After finishing my B.A. in 1999, I participated for a year in the Washington Semester Program at American University in Washington, DC and worked as an editor for a homeless newspaper and later as a research assistant for the Institute for National Strategic Studies.

In 2001, I joined the Ph.D. program in Comparative History at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. My dissertation research examined Germany’s transformation from a Nazi dictatorship into a democracy after WWII. I became interested in democracy development after serving as a NATO peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

My experiences as a peacekeeper greatly inspired me to become a teacher and contribute to the development of democratic values through education. Here at PC, I offer courses on the French Revolution, WWI and WWII, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, and Post-1945 Europe.

My current research focuses on the transformation of Communist East Germany after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 from a dictatorship into a democracy. I specifically examine how the citizens of the East German city of Chemnitz experienced the transformation.