Elizabeth Buettner’s research centres on British imperial, social and cultural history since the late nineteenth century along with other European nations’ histories of late colonialism, decolonisation and their domestic ramifications. She is currently completing a book entitled Europe After Empire: Decolonization, Society and Culture that examines British, French, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese histories of coming to terms with the end of empires after the Second World War, focusing on the domestic impact of decolonisation, postcolonial migration, the emergence of contemporary multicultural societies and selective memories of empire. In the coming years she looks forward to expanding upon previous research on postcolonial South Asian migration and cultures in diaspora, placing South Asians in Britain within wider transnational contexts. 

Buettner received her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University and her MA and PhD from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She has taught in England at the University of York since 2000 and in 2012-2013 held a senior research fellowship at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany in conjunction with a British Academy mid-career fellowship. Buettner’s publications include Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford University Press, 2004) together with articles in the Journal of Modern History, History & Memory, Scottish Historical Review, Annales de Démographie Historique, Ab Imperio, Food and History, and a number of edited collections.