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Dr Diana Lemberg

Lecturer in the History of the United States (post 1850)

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2922

Email

dll4@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

I'm a historian of the United States in the world in the twentieth century who is broadly interested in the connections between power and paradigms, and how American power, specifically, has shaped the uptake of American practices and technologies outside U.S. borders.

My forthcoming book, The Weapon of Words: Language Training in the American Century (University of Chicago Press, 2027), focuses on U.S. investments in language education since World War II. As it entered new arenas of conflict and cultural exchange in the 1940s, Washington began encouraging Americans and others to learn languages, hoping to render the world legible to its strategists. From San Francisco to Saigon, it subsidized new institutions, funding streams, and pedagogies. Yet as teachers and students at home and abroad were drawn into U.S. foreign policy, they voiced rationales for language learning that diverged from U.S. defense priorities. The book will expand our understanding of an issue central to humanists, albeit one that has been understudied by U.S. historians: how changing American conceptions of language learning have shaped U.S. diplomatic and cultural relations with the world.

My first book,  (Columbia University Press, 2019) 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 work has been supported by fellowships and grants in the United States, Europe, and Asia. During the 2024-25 academic year I was a fellow of 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 ����logo 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 and my BA (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Princeton University in 2005.

PhD supervision

• Charlotte Disley

Selected publications

• Open access
  Lemberg, D., 9 Jun 2026, In: Contemporary European History. 35, e78.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access
  Albert, M., Lemberg, D., Tworek, H. & Werron, T., 10 Mar 2026, Worldmaking projects and the infrastructural nexus: an interdisciplinary exploration. Albert, M., Tworek, H. & Werron, T. (eds.). Bielefeld: transcript, p. 19-44 (Edition Politik; vol. 206).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Open access
  Tworek, H. & Lemberg, D., 10 Mar 2026, Worldmaking projects and the infrastructural nexus : an interdisciplinary exploration. Albert, M., Tworek, H. & Werron, T. (eds.). Bielefeld: transcript, p. 121-142 (Edition Politik; vol. 206).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Open access
  Lemberg, D., 10 Mar 2026, Worldmaking projects and the infrastructural nexus: an interdisciplinary exploration. Albert, M., Tworek, H. & Werron, T. (eds.). Bielefeld: transcript, p. 71-92 (Edition Politik; vol. 206).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Lemberg, D., 13 Mar 2024, In: Media History. 30, 2, p. 275-278 4 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review

• 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

• 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

• Lemberg, D., 1 Jan 2021, In: Diplomatic History. 45, 1, p. 106-131 26 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Lemberg, D., 1 Sept 2019, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 296 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• 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