About Me

I'm currently pursuing an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History at Oxford. My research focuses on the the Great Depression within Germany and the economic performances of Weimar Germany before the Great Depression. I also dabble with the German reparations debate. Before Oxford, I completed my undergraduate degree at New York University, where I mostly studied analytic philosophy and  European history.

Beyond academia, I'm drawn to visual arts, literature, and classical music performances despite having no formal training in the subjects. In literature, I have a penchant towards authors who embrace excessive romanticism with a philosophical twist — Rousseau for his "Julie, or the New Heloise," Voltaire for his satire, and Goethe for the emotional depth of "The Sorrows of Young Werther." I had came to appreciate more as I have read him in the context of Cold War history. As for poetry, I have a guilty pleasure for the works of Catullus and Keats. I follow Mahler’s symphonies with an almost religious character and my favorite recording is the Abbado Lucerne recording of Mahler 9 and Bernstein’s Mahler 2.

You can find my CV here and you can reach out to me: sihao.feng(shift + 2)stcatz.ox.ac.uk. Please try to use your professional / academic emails when reaching out to me because GMail and Outlook aggressively filter conventional mail from strangers.

“[T]he flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away, and leave no trace behind—how few yield any fruit—and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough!” - Goethe