I was born in Vancouver, Canada, but have spent the majority of my life in Toronto. I graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours Bachelor of Arts with High Distinction in the spring of 2020. During my undergraduate career, I wrote theses on such topics as Nazi propaganda during the Weimar Republic, collaboration in the Holocaust in the Baltic states, the reasons for the failure of the Enigma system in WWII, the historical accuracy of Josephus’ works, and the reasons for the success of the 1972 Moscow Summit.
Initially, I had hoped to further my German language studies in Berlin after graduating, but seeing as how I graduated just as the pandemic was setting in, the prolonged shutdowns that came with it necessitated a change in plans. Instead of going abroad, I stayed in Toronto and began working on a contract for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada as a transcriptionist processing refugee claim hearings, eventually becoming supervising editor for other transcriptionists. As fascinating as I found my work, I have always been an academic at heart, and I couldn’t be more excited to embark upon the next phase of my scholastic career at Columbia and LSE.
During my time in the dual degree program, I am hoping to focus my dissertation on how the unique experience of living under Nazi rule during peacetime shaped the responses of millions of Germans and Austrians towards the increasing violence shown toward their Jewish neighbours, and how these responses affected Nazi policies in turn. I look forward to discussing and evolving my topic in the years to come!
