Matthew Kovac, MSc
Matthew is an incoming History PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, where his research focuses on the Irish republican movement, decolonization, and the global Cold War. He has also published on paramilitary violence after the First World War, including a chapter in Communication and the First World War (Routledge, 2020) on U.S. veterans’ role in right-wing violence during the 1919-21 Red Scare. His article “‘Red Amazons?’ Gendering Violence and Revolution in the Long First World War, 1914-23” in The Journal of International Women’s Studies, made the Feminist Studies Association’s 2019 Best Essay Shortlist. Kovac holds a Master of Studies in modern British and European history from Oxford University and a bachelors in journalism and history from Northwestern University. He has also worked extensively in the U.S. nonprofit sector, where he has helped to expose wrongful convictions with the Chicago Innocence Center, hold state officials accountable for the Flint Water Crisis with Progress Michigan, and challenge Border Patrol abuses with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him @MatthewKovac.