Previous Work

RESEARCH

My doctoral dissertation is public domain. Check it out if you’d like to learn about Sephardi Jews from the Ottoman Empire who settled in interwar Paris. I’m forever plugging away at a book based on that work.

I also published a few articles (one on multilingualism in Auschwitz, and another on immigrant Parisian cafés) during my academic tenure.

Editing & REPORTING

For a while, I edited book reviews for H-Judaic.

As a graduate student, I was an editor for Traces: the UNC Journal of History.

And a super duper long time ago, as an undergraduate student in Toronto, I reported and edited news for The Varsity.

Audio

Between 2017 and 2021, I hosted the New Books in Jewish Studies podcast, where I interviewed academic authors for a public audience. Guests included:

Marion Kaplan (NYU), on Hitler’s Jewish Refugees

Adam Teller (Princeton), on Rescue the Surviving Souls

Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers), on Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age

For a full list of episodes, visit my New Books Network page.

Teaching

I taught college history as an Adjunct Professor at Sonoma State University and an Instructor at UNC Chapel Hill. My courses on modern European and global histories focussed on imperialism, colonialism and nation-building; movement and migration; ethnic and minority identities; war and genocide; and nationalism, fascism and extremism.

Students seemed to like my classes:

“Robin made me want to ask questions and learn more about the subject matter. She had a great way of engaging people and making people interested and excited to learn.”

“Robin made the environment a safe space I was able to ask questions and give opinions about touchy topics without being judged, and could learn form my mistakes in these environments. I wasn't scared to speak up.”

“Robin is fantastic at facilitating engaging and in-depth conversation within our recitation sections. She provides us with just enough outside information or background to be able to recognize insightful material by combining our reading with her information.”

“I am a Bio major, and can find history rather dry but Robin helped to bring the course material to life and showed its real relevance to life now.”

In the spirit of open access and digital hoarding, please find some syllabi linked below:

The Jews of Modern Europe, Sonoma State University, Spring 2021

The History of Antisemitism, Sonoma State University, Fall 2020

The History of the Holocaust, Sample Syllabus

World Jewish History, Sample Syllabus

Events

In collaboration with UC Berkeley and USC, I co-convened “Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks During and After the Holocaust,” a workshop about knowledge and genocide that took place in Los Angeles in April, 2022.