Silke Mende is a contemporary historian. From October 2019 to March 2021, she was deputy director at Centre Marc Bloch (CMB) in Berlin. From November 2020 to March 2021 she was also Professor for the History of Europe (19th-21st century) at Humboldt University of Berlin. Since April 2021 she is professor for modern and contemporary history (19th-21st century) at the University of Münster. She continues to be an associated resarcher at the Centre Marc Bloch.

After having studied history and political science in Tübingen and Aix-en-Provence, Mende was initially a research assistant and subsequently an Akademische Rätin auf Zeit at the University of Tübingen. Research and teaching led her to the German Historical Institute Paris (GHIP), the Aix-Marseille Université, and the Centre d'Histoire de Sciences Po in Paris, to which she is still affiliated as an associate researcher. More recently, she has worked at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin (IfZ) and acted as interim professor (Professurvertretung) of 19th and 20th century transnational history at the European University of Flensburg.

Mende focuses on German, French and European history from the 19th century to the present day. In 2009, she received her doctorate at the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the emergence of the green movement in the German Federal Republic. The study, for which she was recipient of the Dr. Leopold Lucas-Nachwuchswissenschaftler-Preis, has been instrumental in advancing historiographical debates surrounding the transformational character of the 1970s, all while incorporating the long-termed continuity lines of the 20th century. In May 2018, Mende qualified at the University of Tübingen with a habilitation thesis on the history of Francophonie across the 19th and 20th centuries. Her research considers language and language policy as a political-cultural instrument and situates it amidst the complex interplay between the French nation-state, its empire, and the “international” arena. Her current research project deals with the European history of democracy and parliamentarism in the last third of the 20th century. It analyses how closely democratization, parliamentarization, and Europeanization intertwine in the context of the southward and eastward enlargement of the EEC/EU. Additional research interests include the history of representation, social movements and protest, as well as New Imperial History.