Dr Diana Lemberg
Lecturer in the History of the United States (post 1850)
Research areas
I am a historian of the United States in the world, the history of information, and the history of ideas in the twentieth century. My first book, Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media, was published by Columbia UP in 2019. It traces how the United States shaped media around the world after 1945 under the banner of the “free flow of information,” showing how the push for global media access acted as a vehicle for American power.
My current manuscript, "The Weapon of Words: Language Training in the American Century," focuses on U.S. investments in language education in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I'm broadly interested in the connections between power and paradigms, and how American social scientists sought to disseminate findings and methods outside U.S. borders in fields ranging from modernization theory to applied linguistics, with varying results.
My work has been supported by fellowships and grants in the United States, Europe, and Asia. During the 2024-25 academic year I am on leave through a fellowship from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (for "The Weapon of Words"). From April-July 2024, I was an invited resident fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University, as part of the group project "Understanding the Transformations of World Politics: Ordering Principles and Infrastructures of Communication."
Before coming to St Andrews I was associate professor of history at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. I received my PhD from Yale University in 2014.
PhD supervision
- Charlotte Disley
Selected publications
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News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945
Lemberg, D., 13 Mar 2024, In: Media History. 30, 2, p. 275-278 4 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
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Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media
Lemberg, D., 1 Jan 2021, In: Media History. 27, 1, p. 109-113 5 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review › peer-review
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Information policy
Lemberg, D., 2 Mar 2021, Information: a historical companion. Blair, A., Duguid, P., Goeing, A.-S. & Grafton, A. (eds.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 503-507 5 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
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The weaponization of language training in U.S. foreign relations, 1941-1970
Lemberg, D., 1 Jan 2021, In: Diplomatic History. 45, 1, p. 106-131 26 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Barriers down: how American power and free-flow policies shaped global media
Lemberg, D., 1 Sept 2019, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 296 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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The end of empires and some linguistic turns: British and French language policies in inter- and postwar Africa
Lemberg, D., 3 Aug 2019, British and French colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East: connected empires across the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Fichter, J. R. (ed.). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 297-321 25 p. (Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
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"The universal language of the future": decolonization, development, and the American embrace of global English, 1945-1965
Lemberg, D., 1 Aug 2018, In: Modern Intellectual History. 15, 2, p. 561-592 32 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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History of media and human rights
Mark A. Hampton & Lemberg, D., 29 Jun 2017, Routledge companion to media and human rights. Tumber, H. & Waisbord, S. (eds.). London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 9 p. (Routledge companions).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter