Simone Lässig has been director of the GHI Washington since October 2015. Before taking up the GHI post, she served as Director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig and Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Braunschweig. In her research she focuses on Jewish history, religion and religiosity, philanthropy and patronage, and memory cultures and the politics of memory in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Her major publications include: “Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum: Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert“ (Göttingen, 2004) and „Wahlrechtskampf und Wahlreformen in Sachsen, 1895–1909“ (Weimar/Cologne/Vienna, 1996).