On April 3, 2017 I have joined the staff at the JFKI at Free University Berlin for one semester. That is good news indeed, as it allows me to do some more research and teaching.

It feels great to form part of such a prestigious institution, and I’m especially happy that interdisciplinarity seems to be increasingly common in German academia: Though trained as a cultural studies scholar, I am now a member of the History Department, thanks to my PhD research and (I suppose) my close collaboration with historians in the past. The company you keep…

And, obviously, it is nice to have an excuse to be in Berlin, the place where supposedly everybody wants to be. My first week involved a splendid tour of various parts of the university campus on my hunt for course-related documents, library cards, registration forms, transponder keys, wifi-passphrases, contract copies and several people who had to handle all that paperwork. My various states of frustration and delight were accompanied by weather transitions oscillating between sunshine and snowflakes. I guess that is one of the many downsides of temporal employment: You have to do that paperwork all over again in a few months.

Anyway, good to be at the JFKI, and to be lecturing again about those weird filibusters and their time…