PhD Candidate
Late Modern Europe
Sloane Nilsen specializes in modern German and German-Jewish history. His dissertation will examine the ways in which the Nazi regime relied upon recurrent darkness—the nighttime—to consolidate power in Berlin between 1933 and 1939. It will simultaneously explore nocturnal subcultures that were redeveloped in the city during the period.
Research Interests
- Twentieth-Century Germany
- Modern European Cultural and Environmental History
- Night Studies
- Urban History
- Aestheticism and the Decadent Movement
- Queer Studies
Awards and Fellowships
- St Andrews Dissertation Research Fellowship, Institute for European Studies, Berkeley (2025)
- American Society for Environmental History / National Science Foundation Travel Grant (2025)
- Reinhard Bendix and Allan Sharlin Research Fellowship, Berkeley (2024)
- Fellow, Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (2022-2023)
- John L. Simpson ABD Research Fellowship in International & Area Studies, Berkeley (2022-2023)
- Helen Diller Fellowship; Center for Jewish Studies, Berkeley (2021-2024)
- Fritz Thyssen Pre-Dissertation Fellowship; German Historical Institute (2020)
- Grace Hill Scholarship for Outstanding Academic Performance, Columbia University (2019)
Teaching Experience
- Instructor of Record, Queer Cultural History from the Renaissance to "Renaissance" (Fall 2024)
- Graduate Student Instructor, History of Religion (Spring 2024)
- Reader, Germany 1914 to the Present (Fall 2023)
- Reader, LGBT History (Spring 2022)
- Graduate Student Instructor, European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present (Spring 2021)
- Graduate Student Instructor, History of the Holocaust (Fall 2020)
Education
MA in History and Literature, Columbia University (2019)
MLitt in Transnational, Global, and Spatial History with Distinction, University of St Andrews (2018)
BA in History and European Studies with Highest Honors, College of William and Mary (2017)
