I am an historian of Black Europe and of Empire and I have written widely on the development of a Black community in Germany. My current research focus is on the Black experience of Nazi Germany and Black compensation claims made in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

I joined SHU in 2010 after having previously worked at the University of Liverpool. My research and teaching interests include the history of the Black Diaspora in Germany, European colonialism, and constructions of race in pre-1945 Europe. My first book project, Exclusion and inclusion: Gradations of whiteness and socio-economic engineering in German Southwest Africa, 1884-1914 (Lang, 2007) looked at constructions of race in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa. I have since published widely on Germany's first Black community including Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960 (with Eve Rosenhaft, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 2015). My current research focuses on the Black experience of Nazi Germany as well as post-war compensation claims made by Black victims.

I have worked on a number of museum and memorialisation projects in Germany and I have developed my own travelling exhibition, Black Germany 1884-1945, which has been shown in the UK, Germany and Cameroon and used with a number of school groups.

I am an active contributor to the website Black Central Europe.

Research Interests

• African Diaspora in Germany/Europe
• German and European colonialism
• Constructions of race and conceptions of blackness and whiteness
• History of the Holocaust
• Modern German and European history