I am a historian of the medieval and early modern Baltic Sea region with a particular interest in religious cultures, interreligious encounters, and the politics of memory. Other areas of my research explore how sanctity and devotion shaped communities in the later Middle Ages, and how medieval figures and traditions have been reinterpreted in modern cultural memory.
Currently, my research unfolds along three main lines:
The medieval roots of racism and colonialism. Following a project on racism in the colonial contact zones of Greenland and Sápmi between 1000 and 1550 CE, I am now working on the project “Undeutsche – Racism as a Social Practice in Prussia and Livonia.” Here we examine the relationship between the broader process of German eastward expansion from the twelfth century onward and the emergence of exclusionary practices among German-speaking settlers toward various Slavic and Baltic groups.
Medieval antisemitism and antisemitism in the Nordic countries.
Far-right appropriations of the Middle Ages. Together with colleagues from Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin, I investigate how medieval references, figures, events, and ideas are mobilized within different currents of the extreme right. This also continually raises the question of how political medieval studies should—or must—be.
