Biography

I received my Ph.D. in Modern European History from New York University in 2011 after completing my dissertation, ‘Credibility, Confidence and Capital: Austrian reconstruction and the collapse of global finance 1921–1931’. I hold a B.A. in History and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
I am a financial historian and my thesis focused on Austria, which in spite and because of its small size played a pivotal role in the financial and diplomatic history of inter-war Europe. I argue that the three tenets of post-war reconstruction – credibility, confidence and capital – were first established in Austria with the help of the League of Nations, but that they were not pursued wholeheartedly enough. Ultimately, credibility, confidence and capital became precarioulsy unstable in 1931, because the Austrian government was forced to rescue the Viennese Credit-Anstalt. Historians have long claimed that the Credit-Anstalt crisis was the first in a series of events that produced the Great Depression, but I argue that it was larger developments, particularly the unfolding crises in Germany and Britain, which brought about the Great Slump and the collapse of global finance.
At New York University I held recitations for undergraduate courses in Modern European History, the History of the Middle East, India and the British Empire.
Apart from Financial History, I am particularly interested in the History of Sports and Nationalism.