Dr Lewis read History and Politics at Lancaster University, where, after a brief period pursuing Mexican History elsewhere, she returned to complete her PhD on Austrian Labour History in the interwar years. She came to Swansea in 1977 as a lecturer in Social History in the Department of Economic and Social History, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in the History Department (now History and Classics) in 2002, and became a Reader in 2008.

In 2009 Jill was elected to serve as a member of the Council of the Royal Historical Society from 2010 to 2014.

Current research

Dr Lewis specialises in twentieth century Austrian history, predominantly its political and labour history in both the First and Second Republics. She is particularly interested in the influences of socialism and fascism on Austrian political culture. She is currently working on the Austrian socialist intellectual and feminist, Käthe Leichter, as well as female employment and migration in and from Austria after the Second World War.

Principal publications

Books

• Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria 1945-1955 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
• (ed., with Eleonore Breuning & Gareth Pritchard), Power and the People: A Social History of Central European Politics 1945-56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005)
• (ed. by Matthew Paul Berg in collaboration with Jill Lewis and Oliver Rathkolb), The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Justice (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000)
• Fascism and the Working Class in Austria, 1918-1934: The Failure of Labour in the First Republic (Oxford: Berg, 1991)

Book-chapters and articles

• 'Mobilising Workers in Post-War Austria: The Battle for Political Control of the works councils in Upper Styria', Central Europe, 5 (2007), 1-18
• 'The Birth of the Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund', Zeitgeschichte, 34 (2007), 3-16
• 'Worker protest and the origins of the Austrian Social Partnership, 1945-1951', in E. Breuning, J. Lewis, & G. Pritchard, eds., Power and the People: A Social History of Central European Politics 1945-56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 42-56
• 'Austria 1950: Strikes, 'Putsch' and their Political Context', European History Quarterly, 30 (2000), 533-552
• 'Auf einem Seile tanzen: Die Anfänge des Marshall-Planes und des Kalten Krieges in Österreich', in Günter Bischof & Dieter Stiefel, eds., '80 Dollars': 50 Jahre ERP-Fonds und Marshall-Plan in Österreich 1948-1998 (Vienna: Ueberreuther Verlag, 1999), 297-334. English language version, 'Dancing on a Tight-rope: The Beginning of the Marshall Plan and the Cold War in Austria', Austrian Contemporary Studies, 8 (2000), 138-155

Principal research awards, fellowships, and prizes

• Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55 (Manchester University Press, 2007) was nominated for the Victor Adler Prize in 2010. The prize is awarded biannually by the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research for outstanding achievement in the field of social and cultural history.
• AHRB Research Leave Grant, 2005
• Associate Senior Fellow, Institut für Wissenschaft vom Menschen, Vienna 1996–97
• British Academy Large Grants in the Humanities, 1996–97
• British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship, 1996–97
• Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung der Republik Österreich, Forschungsstipendium, 1986–87
• British Academy Small Grants in the Humanities, 1986–87