Historian

Modern East-Central Europe

I am a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. My work focuses on genocide and ethnic cleansing, imperialism, anti-colonial resistance, gender inequality, and nationalism. My most recent accolades include fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Holocaust Educational Foundation, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Lviv) through the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure program (EHRI), and the Kolegium Europy Wschodniej (KEW).

Color Photography by MTP

Scholar

Researcher, Writer & Historian

My work has also been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Fulbright Program, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and the Crown Center for Jewish Studies.

Slavic Studies

PolanD & the Kresy

"If Poland were a person, they would be in permanent analysis." ― Tony Judt (2007)

Gender Studies

Feminism, masculinities & Gender violence

"Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly." ― Jerzy Andrzejewski, Popiół i diament

Jewish Studies

Volhynia, Galicia & City-life

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."
― Maimonides, מורה נבוכים

Holocaust Studies

Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine & Belarus

"The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious. And this enemy has never ceased to be victorious." ― Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte

Educator

Course Developer, Designer, Deliverer & Mentor

I am an award-winning educator with over a twenty years of combined instructional experience in a variety of subjects and modalities, including at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Between 2015 and 2018, I served as the Assistant Director for the program in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at SIU where I was also a joint-lecturer in the Department of History. Since 2008, I have also been faculty at Northwestern University in the graduate program in Public Policy and Administration.

... For the Perplexed

As a teacher, I believe in encouraging radical self-care, humor in the face of despair, experiential learning, near-rabbinic-levels of questioning, and intellectual rigor.