Martin studies modern German, European and African history, particularly the social history of cultural work as well as the history of colonialism, decolonisation and development. Transnational and global perspectives are at the heart of his research. Martin’s career path has led him through stints in Berlin, Strasbourg, Heidelberg, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Freiburg, Paris and Konstanz.

At global dis:connect, he is examining the role and significance of the military in civic musical life during the long 19th century from a global perspective. From the French Revolution to the First World War, military music shaped how music has come to be consumed, produced, appreciated and practised worldwide. Indeed, it has profoundly marked how we continue to valorise culture, and it propagated European music formations in distant geographies. Combining processes of rupture and continuity, displacement and integration, dis:connectivity is a key concept in grasping how military music has helped to (trans)form our world.