My research and teaching interests lie primarily in the field of cultural studies (especially visual culture) with a particular interest in identity and community studies, and memory studies. My research has hitherto been in twentieth century and contemporary German studies and film studies. My monograph, Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989 (Berghahn Books, 2011),  traces the emergence and representation of a separate post-communist east German identity and the various responses to unification, looking at how these are mediated in film specifically, and, more broadly, in popular culture (museum/exhibition studies, developments in literature, advertising).

After an MA in Film Studies during which time I lived in Germany where I conducted research into early GDR film (DEFA), I moved to Sheffield to conduct doctoral research into contemporary German film. I have taught German and film studies  at the universities of Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester.

My current research projects focus on:

• visual culture and subversion in the GDR
• DEFA (East German cinema)
• international film and history in context
• Berlin and film

My wider research interests include  film aesthetics, film reception and marketing, film history, film theory, World Cinema, and underground film.

In addition to translation work, I am a reader for Camden House, and for several journals including History & Memory and New Readings, and write reviews for journals cinluding Scope, Modern Language Review, H-net and German Studies Review. I have also given talks on film at the Irish Film Institute, the Manchester Film Co-op, and several times for Screen Education, and occasionally contribute to the online film magazine, Kamera.co.uk

I teach German Studies and Film Studies on the following modules:

GERM 100/101:German Part I

GERM 201: German Language: written and reading skills

GERM 233: Becoming German: identity-formation in modern German society and culture

DELC 212: Cinema and Society in Europe and Latin America:

GERM 354: Culture and Politics in the GDR