Research

My research is about the connections between central historical events and the processing of these by posterity, as they are expressed in different cultures. Through studies of linguistic and literary source material from a given past, I aspire to illuminate and question established cultural concepts, experiences and expectations at different times. For example, my master's thesis was about how the concept of the Holocaust took shape in school textbooks in posterity, and in what way it illuminated German culture, social cohesion and processing of the past towards Reunification and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I subscribe to the idea that notions of the past are central to cultural trends and the formation of opinions in society, and that the anchoring of these movements in communities also reproduce these as universal truths. In this intersection important and contemporary issues reside - for example about radicalized groups and societies, fascist conditions, totalitarian power systems and systematic oppression on the basis of faith, skin color or origin.

I work with theory within historical consciousness, conceptual history, memory culture and the use of remembrance. Methodologically, I particularly use cultural and critical discourse analysis as well as a broader cultural pragmatic approach to source analysis.