Historical practice today is characterised by such growing diversity that there are now many ways of being a professional historian. This book focuses specifically on the rise of those who Carole Fink has recently referred to as the 'new historians', who choose to play the role of 'expert' in public debates about the past. Contemporary historians have been given the opportunity to climb down from the ivory tower and engage fully in public debate. It starts with two contributions exploring the general context of the changing role of the historian. Peter Mandler addresses the fundamental problem of the historian's professional, political and moral responsibilities. The book examines the contribution of historians to the process of coming to terms with a recent totalitarian, colonial or otherwise problematic past. It analyses the workings of bilateral historical commissions since the First World War, for example, those funded by UNESCO after 1945 to re-write history textbooks as part of the wider process of denazification. Many Communist countries also established bilateral commissions in an attempt to suppress long-term, 'pre-revolutionary' antagonism. The book discusses the problems encountered by the bilateral commission that investigated Italo-Slovene relations from the end of the nineteenth until well into the twentieth century, including the First and Second World Wars and their aftermath. The former imperial powers have been confronted in the past decade with uncomfortable questions resulting from the process of decolonisation after 1945. The book discusses the consequences of regime change on the way that the historical profession is organised and how historical inquiry is conducted. Historians in the East were profoundly affected by the 1989 Wende in Germany.