Britta Schilling
Associate Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University
Britta Schilling is Associate Professor of Cultural History. Her research focuses on the memory of colonialism and empire in Europe, with a focus on German colonialism as well as comparative perspectives on coming to terms with the imperial past. Her work pays particular attention to the tensions between public and private forms of memory, local vs national memory narratives, and the relationship between memory and material culture. Publications include Postcolonial Germany: Memories of Empire in a Decolonized Nation (OUP, 2014) and a recent comparative article on traces of German and Dutch imperialism in everyday life: ‘Afterlives of Colonialism in the Everyday: Street Names and the (Un)Making of Imperial Debris’, in Berny Sèbe & Matthew G. Stanard (eds), Decolonising Europe? Popular Responses to the End of Empire (Routledge, 2020). Schilling has also supervised a series of internships on the theme of ‘Postcolonial Utrecht’ which resulted in a historical walking tour co-created with MA students, the Gemeente Utrecht and the Werkgroep Gepeperde Straten (https://bitterzoeteroute.nl/en/).