About me

PhD, postdoctoral researcher

Research

Research Areas:

Modern and contemporary political history, German history, discourse analysis, conceptual history

Ongoing research:

“Western identity” is a frequently used key word in public debate. However, what does it actually mean? This is the leading question of my recent research project financed by the Swedish Research Council. The project deals with this question by using German public debate from the end of the Second World War up until today as example. It starts from the assumption that identities are shaped in an interplay with alleged opposites and enemies. The recent German debate focuses mainly on two alleged enemies to the Western world and its values: Islam and Putin’s Russia. Instead of becoming a part of this debate and discussing in how far Islam and Russia actually do represent a threat to Western identity this project intends to put the debate on Western identity into a historical perspective. This is done on the basis of several case studies and by means of analytical tools from both conceptual history and discourse analysis.