Kinga S Bloch

Profile

I am a historian specialised in German and Polish history with a focus on television and its impact on public discourse in the Cold War era. I have published on the role of television series in debates about teenage suicide in the FRG, sexuality in 1970s Poland, and the cultural relevance of TV neighbours after the fall of the Iron Curtain. My thesis Television Families in Cold War Europe. A comparative study of Polish, East and West German Television Series is the first genre-focused long-term comparison of the most popular and controversial TV series produced in East and West Germany and socialist Poland. My research has been funded by the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, the German History Society and UCL’s Graduate School. 

In my time as deputy director of the Leo Baeck Institute London (2019-2024), I was part of the international team that created the award winning lighthouse project Library of Lost Books (www.libraryoflostbooks.com; Grimme Online Award 2024 and Deutscher PR Award Bronze 2025), a digital exhibition and citizen science project that addresses a Nazi crime in the here and now and that commemorates the community of scholars and students who worked at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, Berlin (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1872-1942). I am currently still involved in this project with the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem. In my five years at the LBI London, I have, amongst other tasks, led a digitisation and conservation project of a collection of rare pamphlets, developed and contributed to the web-series Snapshots of German-Jewish History and Culture and curated several exhibitions showcasing provenance research at libraries. My publications in the field of German-Jewish History and Culture include academic articles and online features about the pioneering work of the Library of Lost Books team. 

Undergraduate Teaching

• HST6329 The Germans and the Jews
• HST6772 – Parting the Iron Curtain: Everyday Life in Cold War Europe, 1945-1991 

Research

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the intersection between televised fictional narratives and contemporary societal debates. I am mainly interested in the normative power of television as a medium in the Cold War, when televised narratives had an unprecedented reach into society. Whilst my PhD focuses on gender roles, tracing European TV series’ take on patriarchy across the ideological divide, I am currently developing a project that explores the representation of different societal groups in TV neighbourhoods in Britain, Germany and Poland. 

The second research field I am involved in is German-Jewish History and Culture. Here, I am currently working on pedagogical methods to continue and expand the methodologies developed in the Library of Lost Books project. I am also engaging with the presence of this project on social media. 

Publications

Upcoming in 2026  

Edited Volume: Kinga Bloch and Joe Cronin (eds), Feuchtwanger in Britain, 2026. (Peter Lang) 

Article: Kinga S. Bloch, Bettina Farack and Irene Aue-Ben-David, 'The Missing Link – Citizen Scientists and the Global Search for the Library of Lost Books', in: Sophia Buck and Stefanie Hundehege (eds), Migrating Collections. Translocation Research in UK Archives and Libraries, 1850–2025, Special Issue Oxford Academic, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2026. 

Article: Kinga S. Bloch and Cassy Sachar, ‘Stories from the Lost and Found – The Library of Lost Books at Leo Baeck College’, forthcoming in: European Judaism, 26/1, volume 59, 2026. (Berghahn) 

2025           

Article: Kinga S. Bloch, Bettina Farack and Irene Aue-Ben-David, Mission 

(Im)Possible: Holocaust Education and Citizen Science after October 7, in: Magazine of the Education Agenda NS-Injustice, 3rd Edition, 2025. 

Guest Feature: Kinga S. Bloch, History is not yet written! The Library of Lost Books, in: Gabriele Katz (ed.) Gabriele Katz (ed), „displaced at home – ein ort, den man zuhause nennt“, Julius Dalberg Verlag des Sara Nussbaum Zentrums, 2025), 300-303. 

2024  

Article:  Vamps, Wives, and (Im?)Potent Socialist Heroes: An Explorative Study of Sex and Power in Polish TV Series from the 1970s, in: Fiametta Balestracci, Christina von Hodenberg and Isabel Richter (eds), An Era of Value Change: The 1970s in Europe (Oxford: OUP, 2024), 287-316. 
 

2013  

Article: The Life and Afterlife of a Socialist Media Friend. On the long-term cultural relevance of the Polish TV series Czterdziestolatek, VIEW – Journal of European Television History & Culture, Volume 1, Issue 3 (2013) 

http://www.viewjournal.eu/index.php/view/article/view/jethc035/78 

2012  

Article: Realism Bites! The Impact of a Fictional Teen Suicide on West German Public Debates in the 1980s, Opticon 1826, Issue 13 (Autumn 2012) http://www.opticon1826.com/article/view/opt.ae 

Reviews 

2023  

Peer Reviewer for VIEW Journal of European Television History & Culture 
 

2018  

Review: Martin Stallmann: Die Erfindung von “1968”. Der studentische Protest im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen 1977-1998 German History, Volume 36, Issue 2, 27 April 2018, Pages 319–321, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghy002 
 

2017  

Review: Larson Powell, Robert Shandley (Eds.): German Television: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, in: Modern Language Review, Vol 112 (4), October 2017 
Review: Aniko Imre: TV Socialism, https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-26270 
 

2015  

Review: Heather Gumbert, Envisioning Socialism. Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic, Critical Studies in Television, Vol 10 (3) (2015),  pp 133-136. http://cst.sagepub.com/content/10/3/121.full.pdf 

Public Engagement

2025 

Grimme Institute  

Expert Panel on Digital Sovereignty in the Media 

Speaker at the panel on digital practice („Souveränität in der digitalen Praxis“) 

https://www.grimme-lab.de/2025/10/22/fachtagung-zu-digitaler-souveraenitaet-programm/ 

Alte Synagoge Essen 

Pop-Up Exhibition: The Library of Lost Books @ Rhine-Ruhr (Jüdische Kulturtage Rhein-Ruhr 2025)- curator 

2024 

Wiener Holocaust Library 

The Library of Lost Books in Britain – curator, host and organiser of an event series 

V&A Lunchtime Lecture 

Provenance, Public Participation and Pupils?! – A Peek into the Library of Lost Books (Paper) 
 

IWM Institute Masterclasses – The Holocaust 

Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A: Holocaust on Film (Panelist) 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-institute-masterclasses-the-holocaust 

2023 

Queen Mary University of London – Mile End Library 

Exhibition:  The Secret Paths of Provenance – Stories Beyond the Text (Curator) 

https://www.leobaeck.co.uk/events/exhibitions/secret-paths-provenance-stories-beyond-text