I am a Researcher at the Department of History and Civilization, working on Zionism and its role in the construction of a modern Jewish-national identity during Europe’s crisis 1914–1921. I am particularly focusing on the transitional period from Empire to ‘nation state’ and this process’s implication for the Jewish population in Central/Eastern Europe.
I hold a BA in History from the University of Salzburg (my revised version of my BA thesis on the Austrian Solidarity movement for the Nicaraguan revolution in the 1980s was published in 2015 by Wiener Verlag für Sozialforschung).
I finished my MA at the same university, writing my thesis on the split within the socialist-Zionist movement Poale Zion in the context of the European Revolution and the Balfour Declaration 1917–1921.
Apart from Salzburg I also studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) and Tel Aviv University.
From January until May 2017, I will be a Visiting Global Scholar at New York University’s School of History.
I’ve worked as a research assistant and participated in two research projects at the University of Salzburg: on Antisemitism and Islamophobia in the context of the protests against the 2014 Gaza War (with Helga Embacher), and on popular reactions to the outbreak of World War One in the region of Salzburg (with Laurence Cole).
At the EUI, I am co-organizing the interdisciplinary ‘Nationalism Working Group’ and have co-organized the Graduate Conference in European History and a conference on ‘Peripheries of the European Revolutionary Process(es), 1917-1923’.
In the spring-term 2017, I have taught a course (including an excursion) on nationalism and group identities in Israel/Palestine at the University of Salzurg’s Department of History. In the fall-term 2017/18, I’m teaching a course on Zionism and Jewish nationalism at the University of Salzburg’s Centre for Jewish Cultural Studies.
Before starting my studies I worked for five years as a social worker, taking care of and supporting people with mental and multiple disabilities.