• Short CV

Curriculum Vitae

• Since 2023 Professor of Eastern European History, Ruhr University Bochum
• 2025 Taiwan Fellowship Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica Taipei
• 2021–2023 Head of Pacific Office, German Historical Institute Washington / University of California, Berkeley
• 2018–2020 Research Fellow, German Historical Institute Washington
• 2016–2017 DAAD Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Cambridge
• 2014–2017 Senior Lecturer in East European History, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
• 2014 PhD in History, University of Konstanz
• 2009–2014 Lecturer in Chinese History, University of Freiburg
• 2001–2007 Undergraduate and Graduate Studies in History, Russian and Chinese at European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, Tsinghua University Beijing, University of California Berkeley, Heilongjiang University Harbin, and Kazan State University

• Research Interests: History of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union since the 19th century, Sino-Russian Relations, History of Siberia and Manchuria, History of Empires, Borders, Infrastructures, Migration, and Racism

Selected Publications

Monographs

China und Russland. Kurze Geschichte einer langen Beziehung, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2025 [mit Martin Wagner]

• Non-Fiction Best Book List Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ZDF, and Die Zeit (April 2025)

An den Ufern des Amur: Die vergessene Welt zwischen China und Russland [On the Banks of the Amur River: The Forgotten World between China and Russia], Munich: C.H. Beck 2021 [Second Edition 2021]

• Non-Fiction Best Book List Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ZDF, and Die Zeit (April 2021)
• Non-Fiction Best Book List Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Literarische Welt, Ö1, and WDR 5 (September 2021) 
• Chinese Translation: ZhongE bianjing dahe Heilongjiang: Bei shijie hulüe di diyuan zhengzhi yu wenhua jiuge, Taipei: Shangzhou chuban 2024

Beyond the Steppe Frontier. A History of the Sino-Russian Border (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute), Princeton: Princeton University Press 2020 [Paperback 2021] 

• Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award (2022)
• Klaus Mehnert Award of the der German Association for East European Studies (2015) 
• Award for the best PhD Thesis in History, University of Konstanz (2014)
• Book Talk, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University (2020)
• Russian Translation: Za stepnym frontirom: Istoriia rossiisko-kitajskoi granitsy, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2023
• German Translation: Steppengras und Stacheldraht: Eine Geschichte der chinesisch-russischen Grenze, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition (2023)

Kolonialer Wettstreit: Russland, China, Japan und die Ostchinesische Eisenbahn [Colonial Competition: Russia, China, Japan and the Chinese Eastern Railway] (Globalgeschichte, Vol. 4), Frankfurt: Campus 2008

academia.edu profile