Background

Dr. Molly Harrabin is Powys Roberts Junior Research Fellow in German at St. Hugh’s College. Before joining Oxford, she previously held positions at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick and the international German Screen Studies Network which is currently based at the University of St. Andrews. She completed her PhD in German Studies at the University of Warwick in 2025, where she also completed her BA and MA studies. She also holds a PGCE in Secondary Education (German) from the University of Manchester.

Research

Molly specialises in 20th and 21st century German-language history and culture with a focus on the Weimar Republic (1918 – 1933). She is particularly interested in cinematic representations of gender and sexuality in this period, and how film not only reflects but also shapes social attitudes and cultural norms. Her work also considers the intersections in lived experiences of marginalized identities, and the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, class, and other forms of social difference inform lived experiences, cultural representation, and constructions of belonging. Her first book, Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Cinema, is forthcoming with Camden House in 2028 as part of the Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual series.

Her postdoctoral project examines representations of the body and gender non-conformity in Weimar-era visual culture, with a particular focus on film, photography, and the illustrated press. Drawing on interdisciplinary frameworks such as queer theory and feminist media historiography, the project explores how gender non-conforming bodies and identities were represented, circulated, and interpreted across different visual media. Moving beyond clinical and medical frameworks through which gender variance has often been understood and historicised, the project addresses the ethical questions involved in interpreting historical representations of gender, particularly the challenges of recovering marginalised identities without imposing contemporary categories or reproducing the pathologizing frameworks through which they were often understood. Finally, the project explores the potential of lost material for trans* cultural histories and the recovery of alternative genealogies of gender non-conformity,

Molly is the founder and co-convenor of the Weimar Film Network, an online, interdisciplinary network that brings together researchers, students, archivists, and practitioners with an interest in film from this period. She is also Associate Editor of WeimarCinema.org, an online archive for the research and teaching of Weimar film in its historical and theoretical contexts. Alongside her academic research, Molly is committed to collaborative and public-facing approaches to film history. In June 2026, she collaborated with Oxford’s Ultimate Picture Palace as part of the Rethinking Weimar Cinema conference, bringing academic research into dialogue with cinema exhibition and public engagement. Her research has been supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Association for German Studies, British Association for Film, Television, and Screen Studies, Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, the German Studies Association, and Women+ in German Studies.

Molly welcomes enquiries from students and researchers interested in German-language cinema, as well as potential collaborative partners in the public sector.

Teaching

Molly offers tutorials on the Prelims and FHs German course. Her wider teaching experience prior to joining St. Hugh’s includes courses on German film, political propaganda, and translation as well as interdisciplinary teaching within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick. She has also been invited to give guest lectures on courses related to her research at the University of British Columbia, Dickinson College, and the University of Bristol.

Publications 
  • Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Cinema (forthcoming with Camden House, 2028).
  • ‘Madge Jackson, Die Schreckensnacht in der Menagerie, and the Black Presence in the Weimar Film Industry’ (forthcoming in the inaugural issue of German Screen Studies, 2027).
  • With Ervin Malakaj and Ian Roberts, Mediating World War I: Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front in Context (forthcoming with De Gruyter in 2027).
  • ‘In The Closet: Coded Queerness in G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929),’ in: Weimar’s Queer Visual Cultures, edited by Birgit Lang, Ina Linge, and Katie Sutton (University of Toronto Press, 2026), pp. 175 – 194.
  • With Mary Hennessy, ‘Ossi Oswalda,’ in Weimar weiblich. Filmpionierinnen des Kinos der Moderne (1918-1933), edited by Daria Berten, Annika Haupts, Anna Katharina Heinzmann and Kristina Jaspers (Edition Text + Kritik, 2026).
  • With Mary Hennessy and Philipp Stiasny, 'Die überlieferten Filme Ossi Oswaldas von 1916 bis 1933,' Filmblatt 30.88/89 (2025), pp. 34 - 37.
  • ‘Racially Profiled?: “Jewish” Vampirism in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922),’ Studies in European Cinema 21.3 (2024), pp. 287 – 298. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2023.2224702.
Selected Talks
  • June 2026: 'Queering Lulu: Reopening the Celluloid Closet of Weimar Film', Interwar Cinema and Queer History: Researching the LGBTQ+ Past symposium, University of Southampton. 
  • June 2026: 'The Actress-Producer Dialectic in Weimar Cinema', Rethinking Weimar Cinema conference, University of Oxford. Co-authored with Mary Hennessy.
  • November 2025: 'Bodies That Don't Matter: Non-Normativity in Weimar Cinema', Centre for Translating Cultures seminar series, University of Exeter.
  • April 2025: 'Networking Weimar Film Studies: Opportunities and Limits', Diversity, Decolonisation and the German Curriculum conference. Co-authored with Lawrence Alexander.
  • June 2024: '"Primitive Savages" and "Exotic Nightmares": Depictions of Racial "Otherness in Weimar Cinema', The Future of German Screen Studies conference, University of St. Andrews.
  • May 2024: 'Competing Models of Motherhood and Reproductive Choices in Weimar Cinema', Imaging Justice: Law, Politics, and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany seminar series, University of Lucerne.
  • April 2024: 'Colonial Fantasies in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919)', Provincializing Weimar Culture conference, Utrecht University.
  • February 2024: Anders als die Andern and Queer Cinema Roundtable, History of Sexuality seminar series, University of London. 
  • May 2023: 'Im Kino Nichts Neues: All Quiet on the Western Front and the Cinematic Legacy of World War One', Watching War: A Symposium on Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Co-authored with Ian Roberts. 
  • November 2022: 'Gretchen, Girl, Garçonne: Representations of Women in the Films of G. W. Pabst', Women+ in German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland conference, University of Leeds.