Senior Lecturer in German and History, King's College London
Katrin Schreiter’s main research lies in the field of 20th-century German history. One area of focus has been the interplay of economics and culture during the Cold War, and how these arenas are connected to the politics of German and European diplomacy through negotiations over the German-German relationship. She employs material culture methodology as an anchor for identity discourses on national, regional, and individual levels. Related publications have included analysis of the two German states’ nation branding efforts as well as an examination of East German firm identity under the institutional pressures of communism.
Currently, Katrin is working on a new project that expands her scope of inquiry from Germany to Britain, Italy, and France at the turn of the 19th century. It will address port cities as zones of encounter between European populations and colonial products in the context of national imperial discourses. The comparison between major colonial ports of early and late colonial empires aims to shed light on the role of transnational links for socio-cultural development and formation of class identity in these four countries.