Helene von Bismarck was born in Brussels to German parents, and grew up in Russia, Germany and Belgium. After her European Baccalaureat and a sabbatical in Italy, she studied History and Politics at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and Humboldt-University in Berlin. Since 2004, Helene has been a very frequent visitor to the United Kindom, conducting research in the National Archives at Kew, participating at conferences and contributing to UK media.
From 2006 to 2007, she worked as a lecturer of western european history at Humboldt-University before winning a full scholarship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for her graduate studies. In 2011, she received her PhD in modern history from Humboldt-University with the distinction magna cum laude.
Her first book, a monograph entitled Conceptions of Informal Empire. British Policy in the Persian Gulf, 1961-68, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. In 2019, she published a short history of the UK-German Königswinter Conferences.
In February 2018, Helene was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (F.R.Hist.S.) in recognition of her contribution of historical scholarship. From 2015 to 2022, she served on the board of directors of the British Scholar Society, an international organization of historians dedicated to foster the intellectual exchange about Britain’s interactions with the wider world. In 2021,Helene became a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for British Politics and Government at King’s College London. In the same year, she joined the European Security Advisory Group at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). In November 2023, she was appointed a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI.
Helene’s essays on UK foreign and security policy, Brexit, populism, UK-German relations, German foreign policy, decolonization, the Persian Gulf region and the role of history and remembrance in international affairs have been published by Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Times Red Box, Financial Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Republik Magazin, and other German outlets. She has also written papers and for Thinktanks and academic blogs such as History& Policy, Körber Stiftung, The Imperial and Global Forum, The UK in a Changing Europe and The British Scholar Society.
Helene also works as a broadcaster to discuss international affairs. She regularly joins programmes on the BBC World Service as a commentator. She has been interviewed by Deutschlandfunk, BBC Radio Four and LBC Radio. Her television appearances include the Zweite Deutsche Fersehen, BBC World News, Channel Four News and Deutsche Welle. She has also recorded podcasts with Körber-Stiftung and the Chatham Hosue Undercurrent Series.
As a speaker, Helene has addressed academic and non-academic audiences in Britain, Germany, the United States, Italy, France, Turkey and the Czech Republic, including the Cabinet Office and Chatham House in London and Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft in Berlin.
Helene has won grants from a number of international sources. In 2010, she was among fifteen young scholars from around the world chosen by the US National History Center to spend the summer at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress in Washington DC and attend a research seminar on decolonization financed by the Andrew W. Mellon-Foundation. In 2013, she won an International Outreach and Diversity Grant from the Society for the Study of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Helene has undertaken peer-review for The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies, the American Historical Review and Diplomacy and Statecraft.
Helene has travelled widely in Europe, America and the Middle East. She speaks German, English, French and Italian. She lives in Hamburg.
