Academic Bio
John W. Boyer has served as an Editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. A specialist in the history of the Habsburg Empire and of Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Boyer received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1975 and joined the faculty in the same year. Boyer has written three books on Central European history, including Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement, 1848-1897 (for which he was awarded the John Gilmary Shea Prize); and Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897-1918 (for which he was awarded the Ludwig Jedlicka Prize), both of which were published by the University of Chicago Press. His third book was Karl Lueger (1844-1910): Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf, published by the Böhlau Verlag in Vienna in 2010. Boyer was also co-general editor of the nine-volume University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization.
Boyer recently published The University of Chicago: A History with the University of Chicago Press in October 2015, which seeks to elucidate major themes in the institutional, curricular, and financial evolution of the University since its founding in 1890. His major work in progress is the Austria, 1867-1983 volume for the Oxford History of Modern Europe Series, which will provide a comprehensive interpretation of the political systems of Imperial and Republican Austria, set in the broader context of Central European history.
Boyer regularly teaches the history of European Civilization in the College, and courses on religion and politics in modern European history and on the history of the Habsburg Empire and modern Germany.