Melanie Lorek is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before coming to the Graduate Center, she finished her M.A. in Social Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Her dissertation focuses on how East Germans and the reunified Germany remember life in the German Democratic Republic and her work centers on topics of identity after the German reunification in 1989, as well as issues of critique, subculture, and censorship in the German Democratic Republic.

She has taught courses at The City College of New York, The College of Staten Island, and is currently teaching with the School of Professional Studies, CUNY’s online campus. Her courses include Research Methods, Mass Communication, Social Problems, Visual Sociology, and Sociology of Culture.