SH I am a cultural historian and theorist, with a focus on science & technology studies, critical urban history, and spatial theory. In my research, I explore the empirical as well as conceptual relations of urbanization, technology and everyday life in the 20th and 21st century. Often mobilizing a transatlantic perspective, my work has contributed insights into new materialities and infrastructures in social and cultural history and theory.
I have been trained mostly in interdisciplinary academic environments in Europe and the US and received my PhD in 2008 for a dissertation on the history of New York’s subway passenger culture. Before becoming a permanent research fellow at KWI in 2022, I have held positions as a lecturer and researcher at Humboldt University and Technical University Berlin, a lecturer at New York University, a Mercator fellow at KWI and a visiting scholar at Columbia University New York and CRIR in the Freetown of Christiania.
For over a decade, I am developing empirical and conceptual work on the role of artificial cooling in close cooperation with Alexander Friedrich. I am especially interested in the role of climate control in modern cultures and how these technologies have drastically restructured life both on a biological and social level. Since September 2024, I am Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy Grant Project Cultures of the Cryosphere. Infrastructures, Politics and Futures of Artificial Cooling.
My research also focuses on the social and cultural histories of pharmaceuticals and narcotics. From 2019 to 2022, I led the international project_Governing the Narcotic City. Imaginaries, Practices and Discourses of Public Drug Cultures in European Cities from 1970 until today. (HERA/ EU Horizon 2020). I have also worked to develop historical databases, such as the Narcotic City Archive – the first open access archive preserving the narcotic heritage of European cities and beyond.
Since 2015, I am also part of the editorial collective of sub\urban – Zeitschrift für kritische Stadtforschung, a pioneering open access journal of German urban studies.