Biography

I joined the University of Portsmouth in 2015, bringing with me teaching experience across a wide range of (European) international politics and history subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Austria (Vienna), Switzerland (Geneva Graduate Institute), Denmark (Copenhagen) and the UK (London School of Economics, University of Westminster, University of Oxford, and Brunel University). 

I strongly believe in creating synergies between research and teaching and I am using my disciplinary training as a historian and my keen interest in politics and law to inform modules including Rethinking Nazi Germany and Transitional Justice, offered to a range of undergraduate programmes.

My networks are both international and interdisciplinary. My research on the social, market and legal dimensions of European integration requires the dialogue with political scientists, sociologists, and lawyers. From April to September 2022, I was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt. Previously, I have held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Politics and IR at the University of Oxford (2009-11), and I was an Associate Professor in Economic History at the University of Copenhagen (2013-15).

Research interests

The focus of my research is the European Union including its external relations, and transatlantic relations in particular. I am part of a group of historians who have successfully promoted methodological innovation to arrive at a less state-centric account of European integration, specifically through the engagement with trans- and supranational approaches from the social sciences.

Crucially, I am also contributing to the ongoing re-evaluation of the place of Britain, the EU and Europe in the world at this critical political juncture epitomized by the Euro and global financial crisis, Brexit, and the urgency of climate change.

Internally, this includes in particular my work in the faculty-funded Transnational civil society project, where I am exploring the impact of common market creation on consumers. The project’s focus on ‘consumer citizens’ addresses the agenda of the University's democratic citizenship theme. 

Externally, I have participated in an oral history project on the former members of the Court of Justice of the EU coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, together with the University of Copenhagen and the Archives of the EU in Florence (from 2018).

My historical research on legal market creation has also led to a collaborative project with law professors Catherine Barnard and Albertina Albors-Llorens (Cambridge University). Our edited book Cassis de Dijon. 40 Years On was published by Hart in 2021.

My project 'Of alcohol and identity: Consumers and the creation of the EC common market, 1979-1992' has recently been awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme small research grant (2020-23). This work forms the basis for the preparation of a special journal issue with Liesbeth van de Grift (Utrecht), Koen van Zon (Maastricht) and Martin Conway (Oxford) on ‘The Social History of European Integration’. 

Finally, I have co-edited and co-authored, with Katja Seidel (University of Westminster) and Laurent Warlouzet (Sorbonne University), the textbook: Reinventing Europe: The History of the European Union, from 1945 to the present (2023).