Since 02/2024: Postdoctoral assistant at the Chair for East European History, University of Basel

11/2023: Defense of the doctoral thesis "Transkulturelles Wissen im Ost-West-Konflikt: Das polnische Exil und die amerikanische Osteuropaforschung, 1939–1989" [Transcultural knowledge in the Cold War: Polish émigrés and East European Studies in the United States, 1939–1989] at LMU Munich

08/2021–01/2024: Doctoral assistant at the Chair for East European History, University of Basel

01–03/2020: Visiting PhD Scholar at the Department of History, Columbia University, New York

11/2017–07/2021: Research associate and doctoral candidate at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, LMU Munich

09/2014–12/2019: Research assistant at the Institute for the Culture and History of Germans in Northeast Europe (Northeast Institute), Lüneburg

10/2015–02/2016: Exchange student (Erasmus) at the University of Warsaw

04/2014–10/2016: M.A. studies in Modern European History at HU Berlin

10/2012–02/2013: Student assistant (tutor) at the Chair for Modern and East European History, University of Freiburg

10/2010–09/2013: B.A. studies in History and Political Science at the University of Freiburg

Metropolises of the Periphery: Imperial Visions and Local Dynamics of Urban Modernisation in Vilnius, Tbilisi and Tashkent, 1865–1914

Since 2022, Russia's war against Ukraine has led to a fundamental reassessment of established paradigms of East European studies and imperial history. Starting in the 1990s, the paradigm of 'New Imperial History' had attempted to emancipate historical research on empires from a critical theory of 'imperialism': From this perspective, empires should not be seen as 'prisons of nations' but rather as at least temporarily successful models of organising economic and cultural interaction under the conditions of ethnic heterogeneity. Today, power asymmetries between the centre and the peripheries of empires as well as the role of political violence in maintaining imperial rule are increasingly coming into focus again. Furthermore, many historians of Eastern Europe have argued under the heading of 'decolonisation' that the historiography of empires should pay more attention to the perspectives of people at imperial peripheries instead of focusing on the discourse of elites in the centre.

My second book project draws on these recent impulses by aiming to shed new light on the history of urban modernisation in the late Russian Empire through a comparative study of developmental dynamics in three cities at different imperial peripheries – Vilnius, Tbilisi, and Tashkent. In contrast to traditional approaches, I understand 'modernisation' not as a linear process with a clearly defined goal but as a discursive construct that was of central importance for strategies of legitimation – as well as delegitimation – of imperial rule: Actors of the imperial centre used successfully implemented urban development projects as evidence for their purported civilisational superiority and thus for the legitimacy of their rule. This could amount to an equation of 'modernisation' and 'Russification'. Peripheral actors, on the other hand, could challenge these discursive hierarchies by constructing their local cultures as superior, by pointing to their own initiatives of 'modernisation', or by criticising the concept of 'modernisation' itself. In connection with this level of discursive history, the project examines practices of urban 'modernisation' which developed in the often conflict-ridden interplay of central and local initiatives and included political/administrative as well as economic/infrastructural and cultural aspects.

Transcultural Knowledge in the Cold War: Polish Émigrés and East European Studies in the United States, 1939–1989

The beginnings of the Cold War posed a challenge to political decision makers in the United States: Until World War II Eastern Europe had been a marginal field of research in American academia. In order to overcome this lack of expertise, new institutes and research centers for Eastern European Studies were established and generously funded. Since there were only few domestic experts, émigré scholars from Eastern and Central Europe constituted a vital human resource in this field. Many émigré scholars gratefully accepted these career opportunities, but they did not confine themselves to the role of knowledge suppliers for American politics; in many cases they pursued an agenda of their own. Already during World War II Polish émigré scholars founded research institutions and created transnational networks in order to promote their own historical narratives and mental maps within the public spheres of the Western world. Drawing on the expanding research on the significance of migration for the production and circulation of knowledge and ideas, the project analyzes the role of Polish émigré scholars in the US as agents of a cultural transfer: What influence did they exert on the American image of Eastern Europe in the context of the Cold War? To what extent did they adopt, while assimilating into American society, ideas and knowledge from their new environment? How were the émigré scholars’ activities perceived in Poland before and after 1989? By pursuing these questions, the project contributes to a better understanding of the role of intellectual border crossers at the time of the Cold War and at the same time reflects on the epistemological question how the scholarly production of knowledge is shaped by the writer’s social context.