In Memoriam
Philip Soergel
Professor
Department of History
The Department of History is devastated by the sudden loss of our colleague, Philip Soergel, who passed away on January 7, 2026. Phil joined our department in 2005 as an associate professor, became full professor in 2012, and served as chair of the department for a decade until 2022. Phil received his Ph.D. in medieval and early modern European history from the University of Michigan in 1988. Before joining us at the University of Maryland, he was a member of the Department of History at Arizona State University in Tempe from 1989 to 2005. He is the author of Wondrous in His Saints: Counter Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (California, 1993) and Miracles and the Protestant Imagination (Oxford, 2012).
He was also a co-editor of the Routledge series Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World. He received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. He was a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, had been a fellow of the Duke August Library in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, and served twice as a visiting professor at the University of Bielefeld in Germany.