About
I am an art historian specialising in the visual culture of modern Germany; I also work on modern architecture, art and economics, media, and critical theory. I am currently Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the
Warburg Institute in London. I am also History Editor of the
Architectural Review, and co-director of
New Architecture Writers, a free programme for young Black and minority ethnic design critics.
I am currently working on a project titled ‘Image Economies: Visual Networks and Capital in Modern Germany’. This focuses on three exemplary forms of circulating visual matter – emergency money issued during the inflation of 1914-1923, postcards, and satirical prints – investigating their intertwinement with capital flows.
I also have a second project on queer space in German cinema.
Education
PhD History of Art, University College London, 2016. Thesis: ‘Transmedial Cathedrals: Architectural History in and Between New Media in Germany, 1900-1945’.
MA History of Art, University College London, 2009
Postgraduate Diploma History of Art, Courtauld Institute, 2008
BA Fine Art, Central St Martins, London, 2003
Publications
Books
Bricks and Mortals: Ten Great Buildings and the People they Made (Bloomsbury, 2014).
Published in the UK, USA, Spain, Taiwan, China and Russia; long-listed for the Guardian first book award.
Chapters
‘Notgeld’, in Barbara Penner, Adrian Forty, Olivia Horsfall Turner, and Miranda Critchley (eds.), Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects, Reaktion, forthcoming (2020).
Articles
‘Art History on the Radio: Walter Benjamin and Wilhelm Pinder 1930/1940’, Oxford Art
Journal 39, no. 1 (2016), 49-66.
Book reviews
‘Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before’, Object 12 (2010).
Articles in Submission
‘Visible City: The Publicity Strategy of the New Berlin’, New German Critique, forthcoming.
Books in Preparation
Architectural History for the Masses: Politics and New Media in Germany, 1900-1945.
Articles in Preparation
‘Alchemy in Reverse: German Emergency Money, 1918-1923’.
‘Money is no Object: Ideology and Display in Museums of Economics’.
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
February 2020: ‘Jamming the Discourse Network: Politics and the Postcard in Early Twentieth Century Germany’, College Art Association annual conference, Chicago
