Personal Statement
I rejoined the University of Liverpool as a Lecturer in September 2026. Alongside this role, I am a Research Fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute London, where I lead the project From Exile to East Berlin: British Encounters with German-Jewish Antifascism, 1933–1989.

My research examines the history and memory of state socialism in the Soviet Occupation Zone and German Democratic Republic, with particular interests in antifascism, Holocaust memory, German-Jewish history, political ideology and the role of state institutions in shaping public remembrance. I am also interested in how the history of the GDR has been reconstructed and politicised in Germany since unification.

From 2022 to 2025, I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Liverpool. My project, “The Answer to Auschwitz”?: Holocaust Memory and Antifascism in the Other Germany, investigated how the GDR incorporated Holocaust commemoration into its understanding of antifascism and how this relationship has subsequently been represented in the Federal Republic.

My first monograph, Paul Merker, the GDR, and the Politics of Memory: “Purging Cosmopolitanism”?, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024. I completed my AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2019.

Before joining Liverpool, I was a Research Associate at Newcastle University on the AHRC-funded project Knowing the Secret Police: Secrecy and Knowledge in East German Society (2019–2022). The project reversed the conventional perspective on the Stasi by asking what East Germans knew about the secret police. My research examined the relationship between antifascist networks and the Ministry for State Security, as well as the politics of archival access during and after German division.

I have published on Nietzsche and Lukács reception in East and West, Hanns Eisler, Hans Modrow, Paul Merker and representations of the East German Ministry for State Security. My first monograph 'Paul Merker, the GDR, and the Politics of Memory “Purging Cosmopolitanism”? was published in 2024 by Palgrave Macmillan. I am currently writing a second monograph entitled '"The Answer to Auschwitz"? Holocaust Memory and Antifascism in the Other Germany'.

Research Overview
My research examines the history and memory of state socialism in East Germany, with particular interests in antifascism, Holocaust remembrance, German-Jewish history, political ideology and the role of state institutions in shaping public memory. More broadly, I investigate how historical interpretations are produced, institutionalised and contested, and how the history of the German Democratic Republic has been reconstructed and politicised since German unification.

My current project at the Leo Baeck Institute London, From Exile to East Berlin: British Encounters with German-Jewish Antifascism, 1933–1989, explores the experiences of German-speaking Jewish and political exiles in Britain who subsequently settled in the GDR. It also examines British encounters with East German antifascism and Holocaust remembrance, including the activities of Jewish organisations, cultural and political exchanges, and visits to memorial sites.

From 2022 to 2025, I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Liverpool for the project “The Answer to Auschwitz”?: Holocaust Memory and Antifascism in the Other Germany. This research investigated how the GDR incorporated the persecution and murder of European Jews into its understanding of antifascism and how this relationship has subsequently been reconstructed in the Federal Republic.

Between 2019 and 2022, I was a Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project Knowing the Secret Police: Secrecy and Knowledge in East German Society at Newcastle University. Rather than asking what the Stasi knew about East German society, the project examined what East Germans knew about the secret police. My work focused on the relationship between antifascist networks and the Ministry for State Security and on the politics of archival access during and after German division.

My doctoral research, completed at the University of Birmingham in 2019, examined representations of opposition to the GDR in German state-sponsored memory after 1990. My first monograph, Paul Merker, the GDR, and the Politics of Memory: “Purging Cosmopolitanism”?, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2024.