It’s been a long time in the works, but my book, Women and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), was published on August 25th 2026 by Routledge. It’s part of the Routledge Studies in Fascism and Far Right book series and aims to shed new light on aspects of women’s support for the far right in the German context.
Based on a period of overseas fieldwork during which I conducted interviews with 8 female AfD members, my book explores how the development of women’s political subjectivity often intersects with key moments in Germany’s history and subsequent socio-political and economic transformations.
I cast a critical feminist eye over the ways in which women negotiate their understandings of their AfD support in ways which make it consonant with their own lives and experiences; women’s AfD support is exposed as complex, multi-faceted, and often very contradictory. I argue that this epistemological ‘messiness’ is often underrepresented in scholarly work on the topic of gender and far-right support as it requires us to interrogate our own biases as researchers if we want to scratch beneath the surface of dominant narratives which purport that women do not support the far right more broadly, if they are even political at all.
The core chapters of the book focus on topics such as gender and the family, Islam and immigration, extremism and agency, and the enduring legacies of reunification and the ways in which these intersect with women’s own lives and subsequent AfD support.
I am hugely grateful to the team at Routledge for giving me an opportunity to share my PhD research, as well as my family, friends, and colleagues who have supported me throughout the whole process.
My book is currently available in hardback or e-book format. If you are based at a university or college, please request a copy for your library.
I’m available to talk about my book so please just get in touch if you’d like to set something up.
