Professor Stefanie Middendorf, born in 1973, is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany, and appointed Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and the German Historical Institute in London for 2025/26. She is currently member of the steering committee of the excellence cluster project “Imaginamics” at the University of Jena and editor of the “Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte”. Stefanie Middendorf has studied History, Literature and Psychology in Freiburg, Basel and Jerusalem, holds a PhD in History from Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg and has received her post-doctoral qualification (“habilitation) from Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in 2019.Her recent research focuses on the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust, emergency rule and state violence in comparative perspectives. She has also published widely on European and French cultural history, the experience of crises, the history of capitalism and colonialism, and German-Jewish history in the long twentieth century. Her monographs include “Macht der Ausnahme. Reichsfinanzministerium und Staatlichkeit 1919-1945” (Berlin/Boston 2022) and “Massenkultur. Zur Wahrnehmung gesellschaftlicher Modernität in Frankreich, 1880-1980 (Göttingen 2009).