Biography
Photography
WW II

My current work focuses on WW II, particularly the ways Hitler’s forced labour campaign came into surprising collision with the development of modernist photography. As ever, I am interested in how popular forms can convey scholarship and archival work to wider and more diverse audience.

This has resulted in my creative non-fiction book, The Matryoshka Memoirs. My other WWII project in progress is about French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. I have acquired a 1934 Leica similar to one owned by Cartier-Bresson and am in the process of discovering its mysteries.

These projects are funded by a five-year Insight Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2020-2025). Seed funding from the same body allowed me to undertake preliminary research at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris and the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre in Toronto. Early articles have appeared in Simona Mitroiu’s Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe and Jan Kaila and Japo Knuutila’s Inside and Beside the Camp.