France, 1914-1968
Fighting the Nazis: 1920s Germany
Nazi State and Society
Conflict and Contagion: The Cold War, 1945-1991
Further research interests at academia.edu
Picking up the pieces: Policing Cold War Berlin
The story begins with separate discoveries of related body parts in both the Eastern and Western sectors of late 1940s Berlin. These were not the only gruesome remains to be found amidst the rubble, but (unintended by their author) they became the most metaphoric. The book covers attempts by an increasingly divided police force to resolve this and similar crimes. It goes on to investigate the extent to which policemen found themselves caught up in the intense ideological battles that marked the borderline between communism and capitalism in occupied Berlin. Using a variety of methods and sources (ranging from real police files to detective novels), this study analyses ‘policing’ in its widest sense as a means of understanding the Cold War not just as high politics, but as everyday experience and interaction.
‘Nonconformity on the Borders of Dictatorship. Youth subcultures in the GDR, 1949-1969’ (PhD thesis, University College London, 2001)
Drawing on the work of Detlev Peukert and Arno Klönne for the Third Reich, the PhD focuses on youth nonconformity in Leipzig during the first two decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It uncovers several important youth subcultures in the GDR (associated with Bebop, Rock 'n' Roll and Beat music) and relates these to young people’s stubborn pursuit of their own identity (or Eigensinn) in the face of official attempts to influence them. Changes in mass media and entertainment in the West merged with social and cultural continuities closer to home to create new forms of milieu-based immunity. ‘A fascinating thesis... written with gusto... a lively and engaging account of the experience of being young in East Germany.’ (Examiners’ Report)
German History Society
'The Recent Historiography of Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Germany', The Historical Journal 52:3 (2009), 763-779.
‘The limits of repression and reform: youth policy in the early 1960s’ in Patrick Major & Jonathan Osmond (eds.), The Workers' Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945-71 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)
‘Saints and Devils: Youth in the SBZ/GDR, 1945-1953’ in Eleonore Breuning, Jill Lewis & Gareth Pritchard (eds.), Power and the People. A Social History of Central European Politics, 1945-1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 168-181.
‘The Growing Pains of Sex Education in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), 1945-1969’ in Roger Davidson & Lutz Sauerteig (eds.), Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe (London: Routledge, 2009), 71-90.
SEX, THUGS AND ROCK 'N' ROLL. Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany (Oxford, New York: Berghahn, 2007)