Prof. Emer. Philip Dwyer
A historian and award-winning author specialising in Napoleonic Europe and the history of violence
Biography
Philip Dwyer is Professor Emeritus of History and founding Director of the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His work centres on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and the Napoleonic era.
Philip studied in Berlin and Paris, training under the eminent Napoleonic scholar Jean Tulard. He has taught at the University of Newcastle since 1994 and has held fellowships as a Senior Fulbright Scholar, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz.
He is the author of a celebrated three-volume biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first volume of which, Napoleon: The Path to Power, won the National Biography Award. His wider publications include Violence: A Very Short Introduction and The Savage Heart: A Global History of Human Violence. He is the general editor of the four-volume Cambridge World History of Violence and co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars. His books have been translated into several languages, and he is a regular contributor to public discussion, lectures and broadcast media.
Philip's research continues to take him across the landscapes of Napoleonic Europe, where he delights in revealing how battlefields, cities and institutions illuminate the deeper currents of the period. He brings to travellers decades of scholarship, a gift for narrative, and a rare ability to connect the events of the past to the questions that still shape our world today.