I am Professor of Media History and Theory in the Department of Media, Journalism and Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities.  I am also Director of the AHRC DTP Consortium for the Humanities and Arts in South-East England (CHASE). CHASE is a doctoral training programme across 8 institutions: Birkbeck, the Courtauld Institute, the University of East Anglia, the University of Essex, Goldsmiths, the University of Kent, the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, and the University of Sussex.

Having studied European Studies (German and Politics) at Queen Mary College, University of London, I did a PhD in German History at the University of Liverpool under the supervision of Prof. Eve Rosenhaft. DAAD studentships allowed me also to study Germanistik at the Free University Berlin (1985-86), and later to spend a year with the Frauenforschungscolloquium (Women's Research Colloquium) at the Technical University in Berlin (1990-91). My teaching and research reflect my ongoing interests in these intersections between History, Politics and Communications. 

I have published widely in the field of media history and theory, including two monographs. The first, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945 (University of Michigan Press, 1996) deals with the constitutive role of gender in the development of broadcasting, the role of the media in times of political transition and crisis, and offers a historically grounded critique of public sphere theory.  The second, Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age (Polity: 2013), explores the idea of mediated listening as a cultural practice, a category of critique and a form of political action.

I have worked at Sussex since 1992, teaching Media at first in the School of European Studies, then in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, the School of Humanities, the School of Media, Film and Music and now the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities. I was Head of Media from 2005-2012, Deputy Head of the School of Media, Film and Music from 2009-2018, and Director of Doctoral Studies from 2012-2019.