Raging Farmers: Rural Protest in Germany and Contemporary Europe
Presentation for the Laboratorio in Current Affairs (Prof. Stefano Cavazza) at Università di Bologna.
Protestbewegungen in Europa, 1968-1989
Ich habe diesen Kurs (Proseminar) im Wintersemester 2023/24 an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin unterrichtet. Dafür habe ich meinen englischsprachigen Kurs zum Thema für deutsche Studierende adaptiert. Kursbeschreibung: Gibt es so etwas wie Protestgeschichte? Soziale Bewegungen werden häufig als zyklisch oder diskontinuierlich verstanden – nicht zuletzt, weil ihre Themen, Akteure und Formen dauernd wechseln. Das gilt…
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Queer 20th Century: LGBTIQ* History in Europe in North America
I taught this course (Übung) in Wintersemester 2023/24 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Description: For sexual minorities, the 20th century was a period of constant change and frequent contradiction: it witnessed the formation of queer identities, struggles for rights and recognition, but also violent repression, pathologization, and social exclusion. At the same time, countless people…
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Towards a “Europe of Struggles?” Three Visions of Europe in the Early Anti-Nuclear Energy Movement (1975–79)
Presentation at the “Linking Borderlands: Energy, Environment & Infrastructure” workshop at the Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg.
Caught in the Net: Fish, Ships, and Oil in the GDR-Poland Territorial Waters Dispute, 1949–1989
Article published in Central European History 56 (2023), Special Issue ‘Everyday Transnationalism, Global Entanglements and Regimes of Mobility at the Edges of East Germany’, pp. 173-195. doi:10.1017/S0008938922001029. Abstract: The 1945 Potsdam Agreement established a new border between Poland and Germany at the so-called “Oder-Neisse line,” but it left unsettled the question of the maritime boundary…
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An “Ecological Internationale?” Nuclear Energy Opponents in Western Europe (1975-1980)
Chapter published in Michele Di Donato and Mathieu Fulla (eds.), Leftist Internationalisms: A Transnational Political History (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), pp. 219–232. doi:10.5040/9781350252523.ch-14 Extract: The ‘Ecological Internationale’ [imagined by the French Interior Ministry] was never as united as French authorities or their West German counterparts imagined it to be. Indeed, it might well be argued that…
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The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000
Collaboratively written open-access textbook produced for the “Teaching European History in the 21st Century” (TEH21) Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project, for which I served as an author, the editor of Unit 2 (social history), and primary coordinator at the University of Sheffield. Jan Hansen, Jochen Hung, Jaroslav Ira, Judit Klement, Sylvain Lesage, Juan Luis Simal, Andrew…
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Understanding and Controlling the Environment in Contemporary History
Collaboratively written chapter for the open-access textbook The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000. Introduction: Over the course of the twentieth century, Europeans, the European environment, and their mutual relationship underwent dramatic changes. The acceleration of industrialisation at the turn of the century amplified existing problems like water and air pollution. So,…
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Protest and Social Movements in Contemporary History
Collaboratively written chapter for the open-access textbook The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000. Introduction: Over the course of the twentieth century, protest and social movements changed dramatically. In the first half of the century, much of the European continent was embroiled in conflict between right- and left-wing movements that sought to…
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Borders in Contemporary History
Collaboratively written chapter for the open-access textbook The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000. Introduction: Political borders in twentieth-century Europe are usually thought of as lines on a map, separating one nation-state from another. In practice, however, there are many borderlands and border zones where belonging is ambiguous, arbitrary, or unstable. Throughout…
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Berlin’s Modern History: A European Perspective
I taught this course at NYU Berlin for three semesters in 2023 and 2024. Description: The history of Germany is inscribed into modern Berlin, which has served as the capital of an empire, a failed democracy, the Nazi experiment, a socialist state, and now Europe’s most populous country – all within less than a century.…
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The Gender of Smuggling: East German Customs and the Criminalization of Polish Workers’ Consumption, 1980-1989
Presented at the workshop “Between Deviance and Marginalization: Gendered Perspectives on Transnational Crime” at the Universität Erfurt.
„Unter vorläufiger französischer Verwaltung“: Staatsterritorium, Grundbesitz und die Grenzen des Deutschen Reiches in der westlichen Bundesrepublik
Artikel veröffentlicht im Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 49. 2021, S. 174-216. Auszug: In vielen Fragen der Nachkriegsordnung waren Ost und West in der Politik der Bundesrepublik engstens verflochten. Der Fall des sequestrierten deutschen Vermögens in Frankreich und der „Annektierung“ des Mundatwaldes in der Pfalz zeigt in extremis, wie Fragen der verlorenen Ostgebiete auch…
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Rezension: Gerst et al., Grenzforschung
Sammelband rezensiert für H-Soz-u-Kult (18.11.2021). Veröffentlicht auch bei Soziopolis unter dem Titel “Erkundungen im Grenzgebiet”. Zusammenfassung: Die Beiträge eignen sich am besten zur eigenständigen Lektüre der einzelnen Themen, die allerdings klar mit übergeordneten Fragen verbunden sind. Entsprechend dem Ansatz der Herausgeber:innen, die Bandbreite der Grenzforschung vor allem in theoretischer und methodischer Hinsicht darzustellen, überwiegen insgesamt…
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Warszawa w październiku / Warsaw in October
In October 2021, I made several trips to Warsaw to conduct research in the Archiwum Akt Nowych. Equipped with my trusty camera (and sometimes with my GDR-made Pentacon 135mm lens), I photographed not only untold quantities of archive documents but also some of the sights of Stary Mokotów and central Warsaw.