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 Kaeten Mistry (University of East Anglia)
Kaeten Mistry is Associate Professor of American History at the University of East Anglia. His research and teaching interests lie in the forces shaping US foreign relations, especially the interaction of national and transnational factors and domestic and foreign influences, in twentieth century international history. Kaeten studied at Birmingham and UCLA, previously taught at Warwick and UCD, and has held fellowships at Bologna, NYU and Oxford. He has published widely on the US and the World, the international cold war, dissent and whistleblowing. His current project is on the culture of state secrecy.
As Chair, Kaeten 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 him at: k.mistry@uea.ac.uk.
Vice Chair: Dr Katharina Rietzler (University of Sussex)
Katharina Rietzler is Senior Lecturer in American History and Head of American Studies at the University of Sussex, where she specializes in twentieth-century US intellectual and international history, with a focus on the history of the social sciences and women’s international thought. Katharina has previously held fellowships in Oxford and Cambridge, and is currently completing a book manuscript on American philanthropy, public opinion, and the academic field of international relations from 1913 to 1954.
As Vice Chair, she supports the Chair in defining and meeting the organisation’s strategic priorities, as well as backing other Committee members in their duties.
She can be contacted at K.E.Rietzler@sussex.ac.uk.
Committee Secretary: Dr Daniel Rowe (University of Oxford)
Daniel Rowe is Director of Academic Programmes at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute, and a History Faculty Associate. 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. At Oxford, he teaches US History and Politics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His current 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, keeps an eye on the planning calendar to ensure we get things done in good time, manages committee elections, and runs the HOTCUS website.
You can contact him 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 (London School of Economics)
Elizabeth Ingleson is an Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. 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.
Bevan can be contacted on 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: Samantha Lanevi (Cambridge University) and Eszter D Kovács (University of Oxford)
Samantha Lanevi is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores United States policy towards foreign-born war brides in the twentieth century, specifically marriages between American GIs and German and Japanese women. Her dissertation posits fraternization, occupation, and immigration policies towards these women serve as a prism to explore American conceptions of nation and empire in the aftermath of the Second World War. Samantha completed her M.Phil at the University of Cambridge and her undergraduate at Wellesley College.
She can be contacted at sl2038@cam.ac.uk
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@univ.ox.ac.uk.
Committee members are elected annually around the HOTCUS conference. Details of the election process are advertised each summer.