Jason Johnson, Ph.D.

Jason Johnson received his Ph.D. in modern European history from Northwestern University with a focus on twentieth-century Germany. He spent a year in Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. His specializations include the rise of fascism, the Holocaust, World War II, the Cold War, and borders in Europe.

His book Divided Village: The Cold War in the German Borderlands (2017) centers on the German community Mödlareuth divided by the Iron Curtain.  Johnson’s other recent publications include ones on the immediate post-war US occupation of a Bavarian county (2018); cultural exchange between the United States and East Germany (2019); citizens’ petitions to the East German government (2022); and tourism to Berlin during the Cold War (2022).

Johnson teachers a variety of courses at Trinity, including ones on European history from the French Revolution through the present, the Holocaust, World War II, European borders, dictatorships, and the Cold War. He also teaches in Trinity’s McNair Program as a faculty tutorial fellow. Further, he is the university's adviser and coordinator for the student Fulbright Program. Moreover, he is president of Trinity's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Johnson is also co-founder and coordinator of Trinity’s Jewish Studies Discovery, coordinator of the History Department’s student essay prize competition, co-founder and coordinator of the Trinity-UTSA-Texas A&M San Antonio History Research Workshop, and a member of the advisory board of Trinity's IMPACT magazine which features scholarly and creative works of faculty and staff at Trinity.

Johnson is a board member of the San Antonio Holocaust Memorial Museum and has given numerous local talks on the rise of fascism and the Holocaust.

In 2019, he received Trinity’s early career faculty award for distinguished teaching and research.