I currently lead two externally funded research projects.
The first, supported by the Swedish Research Council, is a consideration of the beer cafés and mass-market restaurants of Weimar Berlin (1919–1933) as democratic infrastructure – that is, as everyday commercial spaces where citizens of different political and social backgrounds managed to coexist and even to interact, despite intense political polarization and deep social conflict.
The second project, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, examines how Jewish activists in German-speaking Europe strategically publicized the achievements of Jewish inventors to counter antisemitic claims, and how that strategy can help us account for the turn toward technocracy in some dominant forms of Zionist thinking before 1945.
