Dr Bethan Winter

Background

Bethan holds an MPhil in Music from the University of Cambridge, and MA in History from UCL-SSEES, and recently completed her DPhil in History at the University of Oxford. Her main research interests include Cold War international relations and cultural diplomacy, particularly how small states use culture in their interactions on the world stage, as well as East-West relations, and the concept of Historical Acoustemology. Bethan teaches across music, history, and politics.

Research

With a background in both music and history, my research is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses on classical music and politics in East Germany whilst the country was divided during the Cold War. I am also interested in sound studies, and particularly the concept of historical acoustemology; in a forthcoming publication I explore the idea of audio-experience in East Berlin through an analysis of the city’s soundscapes.

Teaching

Music

• Musical Thought and Scholarship (MTS)
• World Jazz

History

• Further Subject: Culture, Politics, and Identity in Cold War Europe, 1948-1968
• EWP4: Europe in the Wider World, 1815-1914
• Foreign Texts: Friedrich Meinecke and Eckart Kehr: Two Perspectives on the Sonderweg Narrative
• The Global Twentieth Century, 1930-2003
• The Revolutions of 1989
• Approaches to History: Anthropology
• Disciplines of History

Politics and International Relations

• International Relations in the Era of the Cold War
• Marx and Marxism

Publications

‘Listening to East Berlin: Can a Soundscape be Socialist?’ in Marcus Colla and Paul Betts, Rethinking Socialist Spaces in the Twentieth Century, (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024).