School of Languages and Area Studies (SLAS)

Profile

My main field of research is the city. I am interested in how cities articulate and shape human culture, and the ways in which artefacts, public rituals and spatial patterns both express and promote ways to organise society. As an extension of this, and with a particular focus on Germany and Argentina, I am interested in the ways in which society addresses traumatic historical events through urban interventions. I am also interested in literary and filmic representations of cities and metropolitan life styles and memory cultures. Currently I am working on a major monograph on contested urban spaces and the dynamics of history in Berlin.

Qualifications 

• BA (Hons) Spanish and Latin American Studies (University of Portsmouth)
• PgDip Social Research Methods (University of Portsmouth)
• PgCert Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (University of Portsmouth)
• MA History (University of Portsmouth)
• MSc Design and Social Science (London School of Economics)
• PhD (University of Portsmouth)

Research Clusters

• History, Culture and Development in the Americas
• Memory Cultures
• Social, Historical and Cultural Change in Europe

Discipline Areas

• Area Studies
• Cultural Studies
• History
• Social Theory

Research CV 

Current Research Projects

• The Luminous City: Light and the Construction of London’s Urban Image and Spaces

Books

• 2008- The Lasting War: Reconstructing Society and Identity in Britain, France and Germany after 1945. Palgrave, (edited volume, with Gavin Schaffer)

Articles

• 2009- ‘Dystopian Buenos Aires’. Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol.28 Issue 2, pp.246-265. 
• 2006- 'How Should We build? Architecture, History, and the Post-Cold War Context in Germany'. National Identities, Vol.8 No.4 (Relocating: Remembering the Meaning and Significance of the Second World War in Post-Cold War Europe), pp.383-400.

Book chapters

• 2013- Creoles, pioneers, ‘Speemann’ and the creation of an Argentinean Bavaria. In Marten-Finnis, S; Nagel, M. And Maximyak, M. (eds). (forthcoming). Cohabited Space Representations of Contested Areas in Text, Cinema and Sound, 1920-50. Bremen: Edition Lumiere.
• 2009- No Laughing Matter: Humour as Urban Critique. In Marten-Finnis & Winkler(eds). City and Press (series The European Jewish Press- Studies in History and Language). Bremen: Edition Lumiere.
• 2008-‘That Rubble-Heap Near Potsdam: Pre-War Visions and Post-War Urban Development in Berlin. In Riera, M. & Schaffer, G. (eds). The Lasting War. London:Palgrave. pp.47-66.

Reviews

• (2013) Review of Jörg Arnold’s ‘The Allied War and Urban Memory’. Urban History, 40:1, pp.177-8.
• (2010) Review of Leif Jerram’s ‘Germany’s Other Modernity’. European History Quarterly, 40:2, pp.350-351.

Papers

• 11-12 March 2013- Between a rock and a hard place- The imagining and shaping of Berlin during the Cold War. Invited speaker at the colloquium ‘Gedachte Stadt – Gebaute Stadt’, Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte, Westälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
• 14-17 July 2012- ‘The Speemann’ and the creation of an Argentinean Bavaria. Invited speaker at the conference The Experience of Cohabited Space Representations of Contested Areas in Text, Cinema and Sound, 1920-50, University of Rostock.
• 12 March 2008- The Holocaust: the Ethics of Memory. Invited speaker at the diversity training for the London Metropolitan Police, City University, London.
• 4 July 2007- Chaired the session "Identity, Museums, History, Citizenship" at the 76th Anglo-American Conference of Historians, , University of London
• 30 May 2007- Eva Perón: Between Mythology and History. In Cultural Representations of Race and Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. University of Portsmouth. 
• 3 April 2007- The Holocaust: the Ethics of Memory. Invited speaker at the diversity training for the London Metropolitan Police, City University, London.
• 27 January 2007- From Berlin to Germania - The Mass Eviction of Berlin Jews and the Refurbishment of the Reich Capital. In Never Again!- University of Brighton
• 31 March 2006- Around the Day in Eighty Worlds: the Mythical Geographies of 20th Century Buenos Aires. In SLAS conference, University of Nottingham.
• 10 February 2006- No Laughing Matter: Humour as Urban Critique. In Press and the City, University of Portsmouth.
• 12 March 2005- Globalisation, Democracy and Space: Architectural Statements. In Globalisation & Representation- University of Brighton
• 27 June 2005- Selling Presents, Pasts and Futures: Berlin and its Anniversaries. In Visualising the City- University of Manchester

Conference organisation

• 24-25 June 2005- Conference The End of World War Two in a Comparative Perspective: Britain, France and Germany (co-organiser)
• 13 April 2005- Conference Britain and the Home Front, 1939-1945 (co-organiser)
• 28 May 2004- Conference D-Day 1944- The Politics of Liberation (co-organiser)
• June 2000- Postgraduate Symposium, University of Portsmouth (co-organiser)

PhD Supervision/ Examination

• University of London, 21st November 2012 - External examiner Dhan Zunino Singh’s ‘The history of the Buenos Aires underground railways: a cultural analysis of the modernization process in a peripheral metropolis (1880-1940)’
• University of Portsmouth, Ongoing - Co-supervisor Zoe Le Maiggan de Kerangat’s ‘The International Influence on Spanish Memory and History Politics since the Democratic Transition’