writing about sport is close to my heart

  • The People’s Game: Football, State and Society in East Germany explores how football served as a tool for both preserving and challenging communist rule, using perspectives from players, fans and ordinary citizens to reveal its complex role in German society.

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  • Contested Fields: A Global History of Modern Football expores the global history of football through a thematic approach, examining its role in international politics, economics and culture. The book uses case studies to analyze key aspects of the sport’s development.

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other research

  • The Blizzard

    "Dreams and songs to sing: a Liverpool fan on football's capacity to create a sense of community', The Blizzard Issue 58 (2025): 146-153.

  • Stadion

    "'Eine ganz besondere Freundschaft?' Der Liverpool FC und die englisch – deutschen Fußballbeziehungen von Keegan bis Klopp," in Wolfram Pyta (ed.), Ballgewinn: Interdisziplinäre Zugänge zur Geschichte des Fußballs (STADION Sonderband 2: Baden-Baden, 2023): 249-69.

  • football nation

    "Fußball Internationale? Toward a global history of GDR football," in Dawson, Heinsohn, Knabe, and McDougall (eds.), Football Nation: The Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2022), pp. 43-61.

  • sport in history

    "'This heart-rending and world-shattering news': gender, emotion, and transnationalism in the Bill Shankly retirement letters," Sport in History vol. 42, no. 1 (2022): 126-51. [ Runner-up, Best Sport in History article, 2022.]

  • time out

    "Between self-interest and solidarity: European football and the Covid-19 lockdown," in Jörg Krieger, April Henning, Lindsay Pieper, Paul Dimeo (eds.), Time Out: Global Perspectives on Sport and the Covid-19 Lockdown** (Champaign, IL: Common Ground Research Networks, 2020), pp. 197-210. [** Winner of the Common Ground Research Networks Publishers Prize, 2021.]

  • the whole world was watching

    "'Eulogy to theft': Berliner FC Dynamo, East German football, and the end of East German communism," in Robert Edelman and Christopher Young (eds.), The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War*** (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020), pp. 113-25. [*** Winner of the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Anthology Award, 2021.]

  • stadion

    "'Tanked up yobs' and 'self-pity city': deconstructing the myths of Hillsborough disaster," STADION: International Journal of the History of Sport vol. 43, no. 1 (2019): 58-75.

  • studies in east german cinema

    "Eyes on the ball: screening football in East German cinema," Studies in Eastern European Cinema vol. 8, no. 1 (2017): 4-18.

  • german history

    "'Das Spiel ist aus!' Football and history in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy,German History vol. 34, no. 4 (2016): 608-29.

  • controlling the ball

    "Controlling the ball? A comparison of the Gleichschaltung of football in the Third Reich and in the SBZ and early GDR, c. 1945–1958," in Die Gleichschaltung des Fußballsports im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, edited by Markwart Herzog (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), pp. 413-31.

  • radical history review

    "Whose game is it anyway? A people’s history of East German football," Radical History Review 125 (2016): 35-54.

  • sport in history

    “East Germany and the Europeanisation of football,” Sport in History vol. 35 no. 4 (2015): 550-66.

  • becoming east germans

  • the international journal of sport and society

    "Around the Wall: East German football encounters with the West," The International Journal of Sport and Society vol. 3, no. 4 (2013): 99-107.

  • the canadian journal of poetry and critical writing

    "S3 to Ostkreuz," in CV2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing vol. 31, no. 3 (2009): 94-95.

  • german history

    "A duty to forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the transition from Nazism to Communism in post-war East Germany, c. 1945-49," German History vol. 26, no. 1 (2008): 24-46.

  • resistance, rebellion and revolution in hungary

    "Cautious dissent, reluctant conformity: young East Germans and the 1956 Revolution in Hungary," in Resistance, Rebellion and Revolution in Hungary and Central Europe: Commemorating 1956, edited by László Péter and Martyn Rady (London: UCL SSEES, 2008), pp. 239-46.

  • power and the people

    "Young Workers, the Free German Youth (FDJ) and the June 1953 Uprising," in Power and the People: A Social History of Central European Politics 1945-1956, edited by Eleonore Breuning, Jill Lewis and Gareth Pritchard (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 29-41.