She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in 2015 with a project on the visual politics of poverty photography in the early Cold War era. She analyzed how photographs articulated, framed, and mediated class differences and their intersections with race and gender from the Great Society to the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Her publications and research interests focus on social documentary photography; the ethics, aesthetics, and affects of visual representation; poverty and class; African American protest; Cold War culture; and sensory history. Currently, Katharina is co-editing a volume on Soundscapes and Sonic Cultures in America and working towards publishing her first monograph.