He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2011. He was a visiting scholar at the European University Institute in Florence and a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University before joining Tel Aviv University in 2012. His book, "States of Division: Border and Boundary Formation in Cold War Rural Germany" was published in 2014 by Oxford University Press. The book analyzes the process of German division through the lens of border formation. He has published articles about, among others, Iron Curtain tourism in West Germany and the connections between inter-German policies, social networks in border communities, and the gradual demise of border-crossing regional identifications during the Cold War. Dr. Ulrike Mitter, lecturer of Islamic Sciences at the University of Hamburg