HOTCUS Steering Committee

The HOTCUS Steering Committee meets four times a year to manage HOTCUS’ initiatives and events. The current Steering Committee members are:

Chair: Dr Katharina Rietzler (University of Sussex)

Katharina Rietzler is Associate Professor in American History at the University of Sussex where she specialises in twentieth-century intellectual and international history. She has held fellowships at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Oslo as well as the LSE, and her research has been funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. Rietzler is co-editor of the multi-award winning Women’s International Thought: A New History (2021) and Women’s International Thought: Towards a New Canon (2022) and her Diplomatic History article ‘U.S. Foreign Policy Think Tanks and Women’s Intellectual Labor, 1920–1950’ won the 2023 Arthur Miller Institute Article Prize. Her book Finding the International Mind is under contract with Columbia University Press.

As Chair, Katharina is responsible for leading discussions within HOTCUS about its strategic priorities and how to achieve them, and for representing HOTCUS in its relations with the broader academic community and with sister organizations in the fields of US History and American Studies.

You can contact her at k.e.rietzler@sussex.ac.uk.

Vice Chair: Dr Daniel Matlin (Kings College London)

Daniel Matlin is a Reader in the History of the United States of America since 1865 at Kings College London. His research centres on the relationship between race and intellectual life in the United States during the twentieth century. His first book On the Corner: African-American Intellectuals and the Urban Crisis (Harvard University Press, 2013) explores the role which African-American intellectuals played during the 1960s and early 1970s as interpreters of black urban life to various white American publics. His current research concerns the intellectual history of Harlem during the twentieth century and the relationships between race, place and intellectual life. He also has related interests in urban history and the histories of jazz, gender ideologies, Pan-Africanism and black diasporic identities.

As Vice Chair, he supports the Chair in defining and meeting the organisation’s strategic priorities, as well as backing other Committee members in their duties.

He can be contacted at daniel.matlin@kcl.ac.uk.

Committee Secretary: Dr Daniel Rowe (University of Oxford)

Daniel Rowe is Director of Academic Programmes and Senior Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute, and Associate in the History Faculty . He is a historian of the twentieth-century United States and the wider world with a special interest in political economy, policy, urban, and labour history. His current book project looks at policy responses to the economic turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s.

As Committee Secretary, Daniel is responsible for the administrative work related to committee meetings, keeping an eye on the planning calendar to ensure the Steering Committee gets things done in good time, managing committee elections, and running the HOTCUS website.

He can be contacted at daniel.rowe@rai.ox.ac.uk

Treasurer: Dr Zoe Hyman (University College London)

Zoe is a lecturer in US History at UCL Institute of the Americas, where she teach classes on African American civil rights, the American South since the Civil War, and London and the United States. Her previous research has focused on American race and racism, and is currently working on a long-term project about the relationship between London and the United States from the colonial period to the present day. Before joining UCL in 2016, she worked at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Sussex, where she completed her PhD.

As Treasurer, Zoe manages the HOTCUS finances. She is responsible for banking, preparing budgets, advising the committee on the financial implications of activities and strategic planning.

She can be contacted at treasurer.hotcus@gmail.com

Membership Secretary: Dr Elizabeth Ingleson (University of Cambridge)

Elizabeth Ingleson is an Assistant Professor in US History at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade (Harvard University Press, 2024). Ingleson has published several articles and chapters on US-China relations and US capitalism and is currently writing a book under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, China and the United States Since 1949: An International History. Ingleson serves on the management committee of the LSE’s Phelan US Center and the Conference Committee of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). She is the co-organiser of the LSE-Tufts Seminar in Contemporary International History. Prior to her appointment, she held fellowships at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Southern Methodist University. She earnt her PhD in history from the University of Sydney.

She can be contacted at membershipsecretary.hotcus@gmail.com

Events Secretary: Dr Bevan Sewell (University of Nottingham)

Bevan Sewell is an Associate Professor in U.S. history at the University of Nottingham, where he teaches and researches on the U.S. role in the World and the international history of the twentieth century. He is the author of John Foster Dulles: Apostle of American Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2026), co-editor of Foreign Policy at the Periphery: The Shifting Margins of U.S. International Relations since World War II (University of Kentucky Press, 2017), and has published articles in the English Historical Review, Diplomatic History, and the International History Review. He is Director of the Centre for U.S. in the World Studies at Nottingham, part of an AHRC-funded network on the “Promise and Peril of the U.S. in the World”, and is a former editor of the Journal of American Studies.

As Events Secretary, Bevan’s role is to develop and organise the annual HOTCUS conference.

He can be contacted at bevan.sewell@nottingham.ac.uk

Early Career Secretary: Dr Jennifer Chochinov (University of Manchester)

Jennifer Chochinov is a Lecture in Twentieth Century American History and Culture at the University of Manchester, where she teaches and researches on the United States and its citizens abroad as well as Cultural Studies. She is primarily interested in the role of non-state actors in contesting and advancing state hegemony, as well as the relationship between gender, student transnationalism, and citizenship. Before joining the University of Manchester she received her PhD from King’s College London.

As ECR secretary, Jennifer seeks to create community and opportunity among the cohort of new academics, all of whom are facing a precarious job market.

She can be contacted at jennifer.chochinov@manchester.ac.uk

Postgraduate Secretaries: Eszter D Kovács (University of Oxford) and Alice Zamai (European University Institute, Florence, Italy)

Eszter D Kovács is a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, Rothermere American Institute. She works on the cultural history of the Cold War and its intersections with the histories of science, spaceflight, gender, sexuality, and race. Her PhD investigates how debates of ‘normality’ interacted with the creation and growth of the US space programme. Previously, Eszter conducted research on the role of gender politics in state-socialist Hungary and the abortion debates of the 1970s. Eszter is also an organising committee member of the Oxford LGBTQ+ History Network.

She can be contacted at eszter.dkovacs@history.ox.ac.uk.

Alice Zamai is a doctoral student at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research project revolves around the United States’ perception and subsequent reaction to the then-European Economic Community’s path towards Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) between 1985 and 1993.

She can be contacted at alice.Zamai@eui.eu

Committee members are elected annually around the HOTCUS conference. Details of the election process are advertised each summer.