Roman Birke

I am an Assistant Professor in Modern European History at Dublin City University. My work explores how people, non-governmental organisations, nation-states, and international institutions interacted in addressing contentious societal issues like reproductive politics, property regimes, or the relations between empires and their colonies.

My first book “Population Control as a Human Right” (CUP 2025/Wallstein 2020) investigates the regulation of contraceptives in international law and analyses the role of anxieties about overpopulation in this debate. My current book project develops a transnational history of genetic screening from the 1960s, focusing on Ireland, the US, and Eastern and Western Germany. In parallel, I am completing a manuscript on the role of property in German colonialism.