Szczecin is well-suited to analyze urban representation in public discourses and heritage debates. Its transnational history between Germany and Poland, its border shifts after WWII, and the access to the Baltic Sea inform and shape these debates to this day. In her research, Tabitha Redepenning explores urban authenticity. She takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on urban studies, cultures of remembrance, public history, and tourism theory.
Focusing on post-war discussions about specific buildings’ de- or reconstruction, Tabitha highlights the connections between urban structures through overarching narratives in tourist trails. Diverse local actors structure the city space along the linear narrative of the trails while simultaneously creating a particular city image.
Tabitha Redepenning studied book science, German studies, and European studies in Mainz, Frankfurt (Oder), and Wrocław. Her Master’s degree was in "Entangled cultures of remembrance in the German-Polish context on the example of the remembrance of Auschwitz liberation." She worked as an Educational Project Specialist at the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe. Since June 2020, she has been a research associate and Ph.D. student at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe and a contributor to the project “Urban Authenticity: Creating, Contesting, and Visualizing the built Heritage in European Cities since the 1970s.”