Jenny
I am a Professor of History and Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Social Sciences and co-founder of AIMS@NTU (Advancing Interdisciplinary Memory Studies). I joined NTU in September 2019 as Associate Professor of Twentieth Century History, after three and a half years as DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor in Politics and German & European Studies at York University in Toronto.
My research interests include comparative politics and history; memory politics in Europe, in settler colonial societies, and transnationally; civic activism, social movements, and democratization; the memory of slow-moving and large-scale change (including biodiversity loss and family separation); and qualitative and network methodology. My monograph Civil Society
and Memory in Postwar Germany appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2017 and in German translation in 2020. I am currently working on the monograph Slow Memory: Remembering Gradual Change in an Accelerating World (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
I have held various leadership positions, particularly as one of the founding Co-Presidents of the Memory Studies Association (2016-2023, together with Aline Sierp and Jeffrey Olick) and as Chair of the COST Action CA20105 on Slow Memory (2021-2025). I was also the founding Co-Chair of the Research Network on Transnational Memory and Identity in Europe in the Council for European Studies and the Co-Chair of the German Studies Association‘s Interdisciplinary Memory Studies Network. From 2021-24, I was Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Post-Socialist Britain?, which was lead by Prof. Sara Jones. Currently, I serve as Knowledge Exchange Fellow for HERA-funded Humanities-centric projects on crisis (2025-2028).
I regularly teach courses on memory studies, 20th century history, protest movements, revolutions and democracy, environmental change, the politics of memory, qualitative methods & research design, and German history, politics and culture. I have built several mentorship programs (including within the MSA) and am a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy.
After receiving my Ph.D. in Government & Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2010, I taught at the School of International Service at American University. From October 2012 to December 2013, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Berlin Program of Advanced German & European Studies at the Free University of Berlin. From January to December 2014, I worked for the Independent Academic Commission at the Federal Ministry of Justice for the Critical Study of the National Socialist Past.
I live in Nottingham with my partner, three daughters, and two cats (Toni & Spoons).
