Lisa Heineman has been at the UI since 1999 and teaches courses in Germany and Europe, gender and sexuality, and human rights. Her classes are sites of hands-on work, creative thinking, and collaborative discovery. 

The running thread in Prof. Heineman’s research has been the interplay of intimate human relationships and History writ large. Her books and articles have explored state regulation of gender and sexuality in fascism, liberal democracy, and communism; historical memory; the social upheavals of war; the intersections of gender and national identity; sexuality, business, and consumption; and sexual violence. Her interest in public history has led her to found and host a podcast, collaborate in the creation of a museum exhibit, and co-curate a digital crowdsourcing project. She is currently working on a family history that explores unaccompanied child refugees from Nazi Germany – and the difficult situation awaiting families who were lucky enough to be reunited.

Professor Heineman earned a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993. She is the 2010 recipient of the AICGS/DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies and the 2011 winner of the New Millennium Prize in Literary Non-Fiction.