I joined Nottingham Trent University as Associate Professor of Twentieth Century History in September 2019, after three and a half years as DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor in Politics and German & European Studies at York University in Toronto.

My research interests include comparative politics and history; memory politics in Europe, in settler colonial societies, and transnationally; civic activism, social movements, and democratization; children and families in history and memory; and qualitative and network methodology. My recent book Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2017.

I am highly involved in the field of memory studies, particularly as one of the founding Co-Presidents of the Memory Studies Association (together with Aline Sierp and Jeffrey Olick). I am also a founding Co-Chair of the Research Network on Transnational Memory and Identity in Europe in the Council for European Studies (with Aline Sierp) and currently the Co-Chair of the German Studies Association's Interdisciplinary Memory Studies Network (with Katja Wezel and Ben Nienass).

I currently teach courses on 20th century history, protest movements, revolutions and democracy,  the politics of memory and human rights, qualitative methods, and German history, politics and culture.

After receiving my Ph.D. in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2010, I taught at the School of International Service at American University. From October 2012 to December 2013, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Berlin Program of Advanced German & European Studies at the Free University of Berlin. From January to December 2014, I worked for the Independent Academic Commission at the Federal Ministry of Justice for the Critical Study of the National Socialist Past.

The image above shows a memorial (located in central Berlin) to the protests of 1953 in the German Democratic Republic. It represents much of what I am interested in: controversial commemoration, memorial design, photography, civic engagement and courage, protest and democratization.