I work on the histories of National Socialism and the Holocaust, especially the role of 'ordinary' people in perpetrator societies, the role of visual culture in the spreading nad 'naturalisation' of Nazi ideologies, and on the way these histories shaped Jewish experiences and migrations.
Generally, my work explores the relationship between politics and visual culture in modern Europe. I look to sources such as the built environment, or the history of private photography, and use methodologies such as the linguistic turn or the idea of material culture as an 'actant', to shed fresh light on some of the big questions that have animated the study of modern Germany, and modern Europe more broadly, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Political problems I seek to elucidate in this way include the role of regional identities in modern states, 'second cities', federalism, trans-national networks and the spatial imaginaries of totalitarian regimes.
