Elena Kempf
Old Dominion Career Development Assistant Professor
Elena Kempf is a historian of international law and modern Germany in its global context.
She is currently working on a book on the history of weapons prohibitions in international law from the 1860s to the 1970s. In it, she shows how a vast set of characters—diplomats, international lawyers, and politicians, but also surgeons, chemists, teachers and artists—sought to curtail some new weapons by outlawing them. Her next book project will be a history of arms exports from the three postwar Germanies (East Germany, West Germany, and reunified Germany) to countries in the Global South.
In addition, Professor Kempf maintains a research interest in the relationship between the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the EU. You can find her recent and forthcoming publications in journals including Critical Military Studies, AJIL Unbound, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Heidelberg Journal of International Law.
At MIT, Professor Kempf teaches an introductory class on the history of modern Europe (21H.143J, The Making of Modern Europe, 1789–Present), and seminars on the history of modern Germany and the laws of war.
Professor Kempf earned her PhD in History from UC Berkeley in 2021. Before joining MIT, she taught as a Lecturer at the Department of History at Stanford University and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at UC Berkeley.
Subjects Offered
Offered Fall 2025
| Catalog | Subject | Faculty | Level | HASS | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21H.143 21G.056 | The Making of Modern Europe: 1789 – PresentMW 11-12:30, 56-191 |
Elena Kempf
|
Introductory | HASS-H | |
| 21H.370 U 21H.970 G | The Laws of War in Global History (NEW)M 2-5, E51-285 |
Elena Kempf
|
Graduate Seminar |
HASS-H |