I am a Fellow in Modern Languages (German) and Professor of Modern German and Comparative Culture in the University’s Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. My research and teaching interests cover various aspects of German and comparative culture, including literature, film, psychoanalysis, urban studies and questions of identity.

My books include a study of the European Avant-garde (Polity Press, 2004), a cultural topography of Berlin in the twentieth century (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and a co-authored study of the films of Christian Petzold (Legenda, 2024). I also translated one of the volumes of the new Penguin edition of Freud and led a major project for a digital edition of works by the Austrian Modernist, Arthur Schnitzler, whose literary estate is held by the University Library.