Dominique Reill, PhD

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Availability

Office hours at the Wirth Institute for Fall 2025: Tuesdays 2-4, Wednesdays 1-3

Area of Study / Keywords

History Europe Central Europe

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About

My work focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual worlds of Southern Europe from Napoleon to today, mostly in the lands once under Habsburg control, today located in Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia. My time has been spent primarily on trying to disentangle the complicated stories of those who lived around the Adriatic Sea, though I have moonlighted into thinking beyond its shores and after the Habsburgs lost their hold. Recently I've begun throwing myself into discovering more about the millions of people who moved back and forth between Europe and the Americas at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Their stories tell so much about about everything I care about. Learning about how Southern Europe and the Americas have developed together through the life stories of their migrants never tires. I am now also the Director of the Wirth Institute of Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, where I work with all the different communities associated with the Institute to broaden interest in the worlds Central Europe affects and affected.

Alongside my work at the Wirth and the University of Alberta's History, Classics, and Religion Department, I am also a member of the Executive Board of the Bostitber Instiute for Austrian-American Studies, the Society for Italian Historical Studies, and a member of the boards of the journals Contemporary European History and Journal of Modern Italian Studies. For 2025-2026, I am serving as the President of the Central European History Society for North America.

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Research

I have written two books and in the final stages of finishing my third. The two books I have published are (in order from oldest to newest):

Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice, Stanford University Press, 2012.

• Received 2014 Book Prize from the Center for Austrian Studies.
• Received Honorable Mention from the Southern Historical Association’s 2012 Smith Book Award for European History.
• Finalist for the 2015 Laura Shannon Book Prize in European Studies.

The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire, Belknap Press - Harvard University Press, 2020.

• Received Honorable Mention 2021 Barbara Jelavich Book Award.
• Reviewed favorably everywhere, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Financial Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jutarnji List, Dublin Review of Books, and all the major academic journals dedicated to modern European history.

Riječka kriza: život nakon Habsburške monarhije, Ljevak, 2024.

Croatian translation of The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire (see more below)

Translation by Mišo Grundler

I have also recently published several research articles that I am particularly proud of. Please take a look at them if you have the chance:

“The Divorce Mill: Mercenary Citizenship in the Twilight of the Habsburg Empire,” Contemporary European History, published on FirstView.

“Irrelevant Scapegoat: The Perils of Doing European History in Post-Trump America,” Contemporary European History, vol. 32, no. 1, 2023, 27-32. Reprinted in the Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, vol. 71 (Spring 2023): 65-74.

Reill, Dominique Kirchner, Ivan Jeličić, and Francesca Rolandi, “Redefining Citizenship after Empire: The Rights to Welfare, to Work, and to Remain in a Post-Habsburg World,” Journal of Modern History, vol. 1, no. 2, 2022: 326-362. Awarded 2023 Central European History Society's biannual Annelise Thimme Prize as the best journal article on Central European History published in 2021-2022.

Moyd, Michelle R. and Dominique Kirchner Reill, “The COVID-19 Diaries: An Interview,” in special forum “Central European History in the Age of COVID-19,” guest edited by Christian Goeschel, Dominique Reill, and Lucy Riall in Central European History (2021), Vol. 54, No. 4: 690-695.

 

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Teaching

In the past I have taught courses on Modern European History (1650-present) with a focus on migration, Nineteenth-Century Europe, Post-World War II Europe, Nationalism, and seminar courses on looking at the Modern Mediterranean, 1900s Europe, and the history of Charisma.

At the University of Alberta I will be teaching courses focused on the Habsburg Monarchy and Central Europe, though I can advise graduate students in other topics as well (such as Balkan, Italian, and Mediterranean history).

To learn more about what projects I'm working on, please visit the websites of the Wirth Institue for Austrain and Central European Studies and the Central European History Convention (which I have co-founded and co-organize with my colleague in Vienna Professor Peter Becker). 

Dominique Kirchner Reill

Contemporary European History. 2024 February; 10.1017/S096077732400002X

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Bulletin of the German Historical Institute . 2023 July;

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Dominique Kirchner Reill

Journal of Austrian-American History. 2023 May; 10.5325/jaustamerhist.7.1.0001

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Perspectives on History . 2023 April;

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Dominique Kirchner Reill

Contemporary European History. 2023 February; 10.1017/S0960777322000571

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The Journal of Modern History. 2022 June; 10.1086/719447

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Central European History. 2021 December; 10.1017/s0008938921001424

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Zócalo Public Square . 2021 January;

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Belknap Press- Harvard University Press. 2020 November; 10.4159/9780674249714

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Atti del Convegno Fiume 1919-2019. Un centenario europeo tra identità, memorie e prospettive di ricerca. Vittoriale degli Italiani. 2020 March;

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Zócalo Public Square . 2020 January;

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Slavic Review. 2019 January; 10.1017/slr.2019.228

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The Balkans as Europe, 1821–1914. 2018 May; 10.1017/9781787442290

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Mediterranean Diasporas : Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century. 2016 January; 10.5040/9781474220019

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Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History. 2014 January; 10.1017/cbo9781107298576

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Stanford University Press. 2012 February; 10.11126/stanford/9780804774468.001.0001

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The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy. 2012 January; 10.1057/9780230362758

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Austrian History Yearbook. 2011 April; 10.1017/s0067237811000014

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California Italian Studies. 2011 January; 10.5070/c321008944

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Different paths to the nation. Regional and national identities in Germany, Italy, and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1830-1870. 2007 January; 10.1057/9780230801424

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