My main research focus is the social, cultural and political history of Europe c. 1760 - present. I have published dozens of articles and several books on my themes of special interest, which include citizenship; nationalism; religion; liberalism and its role in the formation of cultural norms and expectations; time and temporal rhythms; the history of towns and cities; the cultural history of economic life; historiography and theory.

I’ve recently embarked on a series of works pertaining to the broad field of political culture. In this vein, I recently completed a book on the future of democracy. Written jointly with the distinguished economist Bruno S. Frey, it was published by the Berlin publisher Aufbau-Verlag in 2023.

My longer-term project is a history of epistocracy — of the idea that the knowers and wise men should rule — from the Reformation to the present day. A short book in German on this topic will be published by the Claudius Verlag in January 2024 (for details, see below).

Books include:

• A Contested Nation: History, Memory. and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761. - 1891 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

• Nationalism in Europe, 1890 - 1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003)

• (edited with Len Scales) Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

• Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

• Wer hat Angst vor Tell? Unzeitgemässes zur Demokratie (Basel: Echtzeit-Verlag, 2020).

• (mit Bruno S. Frey) Mehr Demokratie wagen. Für eine Teilhabe aller (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, Januar 2023)

• Prediger der Wahrheit. Von der Reformation zur modernen Elitenherrschaft (München: Claudius Verlag, März 2024)

Books currently in preparation or forthcoming include:

• Imposing Wisdom: A History of Epistocracy From Martin Luther to Mark Zuckerberg (publication planned for 2025).

Peer-Reviewed Articles include:

• ‘One Clock fits all? Time and Imagined Communities in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Central European History, vol. 53, no. 1 (2020), 48 - 70.

• ‘Die Ungeduld mit der Zeit: Britische und deutsche Bahnpassagiere im 19. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift (February 2019), 46 - 80.

• ‘Coping with Deviance: Swiss Nationalism in the Long Nineteenth Century’, Nations and Nationalism, 17:4 (2011), 256 – 74.

• ‘Beneath the “culture war”: Corpus Christi processions and mutual accommodation in the Second German Empire’, The Journal of Modern History, 82 (2010), 288 – 334. 

• ‘Nation und Religion. Von der Imagination des Nationalen zur Verarbeitung von Nationalisierungsprozessen’, Historische Zeitschrift, 283:3 (2006), 617 – 56.

•  ‘”A unique fusion of the natural and the man-made”: the trajectory of Swiss nationalism, 1933 – 1939’, Journal of Contemporary History, 39:1 (2004), 5 – 24.

•  (with Eric Kaufmann) ‘”Dominant Ethnicity” and the “Ethnic-Civic” Dichotomy in the work of A.D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism, 10:1/2 (2004), 61 – 76.

• ‘Boundary Mechanisms and Symbolic Resources: Towards a Process-Oriented Approach to National Identity’, Nations and Nationalism, 9:2 (2003), 173 – 93.

•   ‘Competing Memories of the Nation: Liberal Historiography and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Past, 1870 – 1900’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), 194 – 226.

•   ‘In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40:4 (1998), 637 – 65.

•  (with Eric Kaufmann) ‘In search of the authentic nation: landscape and national identity in Canada and Switzerland, Nations and Nationalism, 4:4 (1998), 483 – 510.

Book chapters include:

• ‘Intellektuelle: Wer sie sind und wo sie heute stehen’, in Links, zeitgeistig und machtverliebt: Liberale Gedanken zu den Intellektuellen (Progress Foundation/Denkanstösse, Zürich, 2023), 11 - 38.

•  ‘Von der Demokratie zur Herrschaft der Weisen?’, in Olivier Kessler (ed.), Freiheit statt Technokratie (Verlag Liberales Institut, circa 31,000 Zeichen).

• ‘Nationalism in Europe, 1918-1945’, in John Breuilly (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2013), 414 – 34.

• ‘Urban Economies and the National Imagination: The German South, 1860 – 1914, in William Whyte and Oliver Zimmer (eds.), Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848 – 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 257 – 86.

•  ‘Introduction’ (with William Whyte), in William Whyte and Oliver Zimmer (eds.), Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848 – 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1 – 16.

•  ‘Circumscribing Community in Constructions of Swiss Nationhood’, in Timothy Baycroft & Mark Hewitson (eds.), What is a Nation? Europe 1789 – 1914 (Oxford University Press, 2006), 100 – 119.

•   ‘In Search of Natural Identity: Alpine Landscape and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Nation’, in Paolo Squatriti (ed.), Natures Past: The Environment and Human History (The University of Michigan Press, 2006), 240 – 69.

•  ‘Nation, nationalism and power in Switzerland, 1760 – 1900’, in Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (eds.), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 333 – 53.

•  ‘Introduction’ (with Len Scales), in Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (eds.), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1 – 29.

•  ‘Forging the Authentic Nation: Alpine Landscape and Swiss National Identity’, in Alain Dieckhoff and Natividad Gutierrez (eds.), Modern Roots: Studies of National Identities (Ashgate Publishers, 2001), 89 – 112.

•  ‘Die “Volksgemeinschaft”. Entstehung und Funktion einer nationalen Einheitssemantik in den 1930er Jahren in der Schweiz’, in Kurt Imhof, Heinz Kleger and Gaetano Romano (eds.), Konkordanz und Kalter Krieg. Analyse von Medienereignissen in der Schweiz der Zwischen- und Nachkriegszeit (Seismo, 1996), 85 – 110.

•   ‘Die Typisierung der Juden in der Schweizer Tagespresse der Jahre 1933 – 1934: Aspekte eines Fremdbildes im Prozess nationaler Identitätskonstruktion’, in Kurt Imhof, Heinz Kleger, Gaetano Romano (eds.), Zwischen Konflikt und Konordanz. Analyse von Medienereignissen in der Schweiz der Vor- und Zwischenkriegszeit (Seismo, 1994), 247 – 88.