Work

Presentation and film-screening at the Historisches Seminar, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 22 July 2025.Read more...

Presented with Alexander Mayer at an international workshop on 'Social Mobility, Meritocracy, and Dictatorship in 20th-Century Europe', Bundeswehr-Universität München, 21 July 2025.Read more...

Since 2022, Helen has been working on a documentary project featuring a collection of video interviews with surviving former pupils of the National Political Education Institutes (Napolas), Nazi Germany's leading elite schools. The short documentary, which has been created in both English- and German-language versions, premiered in Potsdam in May, at the launch of Helen's exhibition on the Napola in Potsdam.Read more...

in The German National Imagination from the Early Modern Period to the Present: Cultural Identities in a Changing Landscape. Essays for Joachim Whaley, ed. Charlotte Woodford, Anita Bunyan, and Margarete Tiessen, Cambridge (Legenda Press), 2025, pp. 96-112.

This essay investigates a little-known genre of German children's literature, the Prussian cadet-school story, exploring the glorification of patriotic feeling and martial career propspects in volumes such as Paul von Szczepanski’s Spartanerjünglinge (Spartan Youths) and Johannes van Dewall’s Kadettengeschichten (Cadet-Tales).Read more...

Public lecture, presented at the Ratsaal des Bürgerhauses, Nordhausen Town Hall, Nordhausen am Harz, 9 May 2025.Read more...

Keynote paper, delivered at an international interdisciplinary conference on 'Laughter as a Political Coping Mechanism', University of Durham, 28 March 2025.Read more...

Presented at the Digital Humanities Town Hall, University of Durham, 19 March 2025.Read more...

Invited lecture, given to students at Durham Sixth Form Centre, 18 March 2025.Read more...

Invited presentation, presented at the Durham University Game Studies Mindgames Workshop, University of Durham, 6 March 2025.Read more...

Review of Mary Fulbrook's Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023), The English Historical Review 140, Issue 602, February 2025, pp. 266–268.

In a political landscape where the stability of democracy seems once again to be embattled by the rise of far-right parties, Mary Fulbrook’s exploration of how quickly the general population might condone the ultimately genocidal persecution of minorities under an authoritarian regime is both salutary and sobering.Read more...