Patricia Hertel is a researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin and Privatdozentin at the University of Basel. In the academic year 2023/24, she is a visiting professor for global history at the FU Berlin. 

As a historian for nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, she focuses on transnational history and cultural history. Her second book (under contract with De Gruyter) examines tourism to the Western European dictatorships. Currently, she investigates the history of professional travel in the age of aviation.

After a training as a publishing manager, she studied German Philology, History, and Portuguese Philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Parallel to her university studies, she trained as a journalist and did freelance work for the press and radio. She concluded her doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) with a PhD thesis entitled The Crescent Remembered: Islam and Nationalism on the Iberian Peninsula before going on to hold the position of postdoc researcher at the University of Basel. With the support of an Advanced Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, she has been a visiting scholar at King’s College London, the German Historical Institute London, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and the Universitat de València. As a lecturer at the universities of Basel, St. Gallen, Lucerne, and Fribourg/Switzerland, she has taught over the past decade modern and contemporary European history, as well as academic history writing.