Born London, 12^th July 1964

Lecturer in English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, since January 2000

B.A. Hons German with European Studies, First Class, University of Sussex, July 1987

M.A. Critical Theory – English Literature, University of Sussex, September 1988

D.Phil in German Studies

Under the supervision of Dr. M. Kohlenbach, Dr. D. Scheunemann and Dr. D Forgacs; submitted to the University of Sussex and awarded in January 1995

One year undergraduate studentship awarded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst [DAAD] to enable studies [Germanistik/Film/Philosophie/Nordamerikastudien] at the Freie Universität Berlin from October 1985 to July 1986

British Academy One Year Award for Study leading to degree of M.A. in Critical Theory from September 1987 to September 1988

British Academy Two Year Award for further postgraduate research into a Ph.D. in German from October 1988 to September 1990

One year postgraduate studentship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst to undertake research in Berlin archives and libraries and attend the Freie Universität Berlin [Department: Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaften] from October 1990 to September 1991

Ronald Tress Prize 2001 for best first book (Walter Benjamin; Overpowering Conformism) by a Birkbeck faculty member (jointly awarded)

Walter Benjamin, Overpowering Conformism, Pluto Press, London 2000, 298pp

Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde, Verso, London, 2002., 344pp

‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Obscure Objects of Desire; Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century, edited by Tanya Harrod, Crafts Council, London 1997, pp21–31

‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’ in Art, Technology, Technique; Art, Criticism, Theory, edited by John Gange, Pluto Press, London, 1998, pp17–33

‘Souvenirs and Forgetting; Walter Benjamin’s Memory-work’ in Material Memories; Design and Evocation, edited by Marius Kwint, Jeremy Aynsley and Christopher Breward, Berg, Oxford/New York 1999, pp107–122

‘Spectacles and Signs’ in Living in a Material World, collection of conference papers, Coventry University, 2000, pp240–251

‘Elemental: The Arcades Project’ in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy; Destruction and Experience, edited by Peter Osborne and Andrew Benjamin, Clinamen Press, Manchester 2000, pp304–308

‘Mad Pride and Prejudice’ in Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture, edited by Ted Curtis, Robert Dellar, Esther Leslie, Ben Watson, Spare Change Books, London 2000, pp67–82

‘One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back’ in A Century of Wars and Revolutions: Essays in Twentieth Century History, edited by Keith Flett and David Renton, Rivers Oram Press, London 2000, pp33–53

‘Some Optical Illusion: Colour and Craft’ in The Body Politic: The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft, edited by Julian Stair, Crafts Council, London 2000, pp51–57

‘Flaneurs in Paris and Berlin’ in Histories of Leisure, edited by Rudy Koshlar, Berg, London 2002, pp61-77

‘Philistines and Art Vandals Get Upset’ in The Philistine Controversy, edited by Dave Beech and John Roberts, Verso, London 2002, pp201-227

‘Murmurs of the Future’, in A Berlin Childhood/Berliner Kindheit,, a book of photographs by Aura Rosenberg, Steidl/Distributed Art Publishers, New York, 2002 pp7-11/pp12-15

'Magical Properties', in The Uncanny Room, edited by Janice West and Tessa Peters, Luminous Books, London 2002, pp57-63

'Absent Minded Professors; Etch-a-Sketching Academic Forgetting' in Regimes of Memory, edited by Susannah Radstone and Kate Hodgkin, Routledge, London 2003, pp172-185

'Jameson, Brecht, Lenin and Spectral Possibilities', in Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, Palgrave, London 2004 pp195-209

‘Pocahontas; a study of Disney’s 33rd full-length animated cartoon Pocahontas’ for ‘History at Large’ in History Workshop Journal, 41 spring 1996, pp235–239

‘Wrapping the Reichstag; Re-visioning German History’ in Radical Philosophy 77, May/June 1996, pp6–16

‘Exotic of the Everyday: Critical Theory in the Parlour’ in Things 4, summer 1996, pp83–101

‘Walter Penetrates Deeply into the Web’ in Mute 7, winter 1997

‘Wallace and Gromit: An Animating Love’ in Soundings 5, spring 1997, pp149–156

‘Walter Benjamin; Dreams, Toys and Tales’ in Crafts, Crafts Council magazine, spring 1997

‘On Making-up and Breaking-up: »Woman« and »Ware«, »Craving« and »Corpse« in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades project’ in Historical Materialism 1, winter 1997, pp66–89

‘The Multiple Identities of Walter Benjamin’, New Left Review 226, November/December 1997, pp128–135

‘Professional Faces: Explaining the Shadows; On August Sander’ in Things 7, winter 1997–1998, pp87–96

‘Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft’ in Journal of Design History, Vol. 11 no. 1, spring 1998, special issue on Modernism and Modernity in Design, pp5–13

‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’ in ‘Art, Criticism, Theory’, Art, Technology, Technique; 4, 1998, pp17–33

‘The War on Memory; Disappearances in Soviet Photography’, in Things 9, winter 1998–1999, pp50–69

Introduction and translation of letter exchange between T. W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse on the Frankfurt School and the Student Movement, New Left Review 233, January/February 1999, pp118–123, pp123–136

‘Telescoping the Microscopic Object: Walter Benjamin, the Collector’ in The Optic of Walter Benjamin, De-, Dis-, Ex-, no. 3, March 1999, pp58–91

‘Elective Affinities: the Hunched Man, the Old Man and B.B.’, Revolutionary History, vol.7, no. 2, ‘Culture and Revolution in the Thought of Leon Trotsky’, summer 1999, pp158–184

‘Space and West-end Girls; Walter Benjamin versus Cultural Studies’ in ‘Hating Tradition Properly’, New Formations 38, 1999, pp110–124

‘The Vanishing Commissar: Stalin’s Manipulation of Art and Photography’ in New Interventions, vol. 9, no.4 winter 2000, pp25–31

‘Dreamsleep: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project’, Things 13, winter 2000- 2001, pp48–67

‘Walter Benjamin: Tragedy and Progress’, Workers’ Liberty, December 2000

‘Notes on Notes: A Money Montage’, Inventory, vol. 4, no. 2, 2001, p28- 47

‘Live to Write, Write to Live’, (co-written with Ben Watson), Quid 8I, pp16- 26

Entry on Walter Benjamin for the Literary Dictionary – www.litdict.com

‘Tate Modern: A Year of Sweet Success’, Radical Philosophy 109, pp2- 5

'Die Kunst der Kritik', Jungle World: Die Linke Wochenzeitung, 17 September 2003

‘THE WORK OF ART...:’ Contributions to a CD-ROM and Website on Walter Benjamin’s ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’. The website address is: www.obsolete.com/artwork/

One of the essays from this project has also been reproduced at
http://www.in-print.org.uk/essays/leslie-pp.shtml

‘Terrible Facts series’, 14 Stickers responding to the question 'What’s Wrong', art exhibition at Trade Apartment Brixton, London, 1 October 2001- 5 November 2001

'KX-CTRL', digital video (26.40 mins), screened at Cecil Sharp House, part of Visionary Landscapes festival, to musical accompaniment, 23 May 2003

Review of Michael Löwy’s On Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin [Humanities Press 1993] for Revolutionary History, vol. 5, no. 2, autumn 1993, pp159- 162

Review of Bernhard Siegert’s Relais: Geschicke der Literatur als Epoche der Post [1751–1913] [Berlin 1993] for Mute no. 1, November 1994

Review of Jens-Peter Steffen’s Militant Tendency: Trotzkismus in der Labour Party [Peter Lang 1994] for Revolutionary History, vol. 6, no. 1, spring 1996, pp181- 184

‘Askant Visions’; a review of Andrew Benjamin’s and Peter Osborne’s edited collection Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy; Destruction and Experience [Routledge 1994] in Parataxis: Modernism and Modernist Writing 8, September 1996, pp75- 78

‘The Twilight Zone; Negative Vibes’; a review of Julian Stallabrass’ Gargantua [Verso 1996] in Things 5, winter 1996, pp117- 119

‘What’s Cooking; Hausbound’; a review of Erica Carter’s How German is She?; Postwar German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman [University of Michigan Press 1997] in Things 6, summer 1997, pp148- 152

Review of Paul Duro’s edited collection Rhetoric of the Frame; Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork [Cambridge University Press 1997] in Crafts, Crafts Council magazine, no. 148, September/October 1997

Review of books concerning Walter Benjamin by Bullock and Jennings, Cadava and Brodersen for Historical Materialism 2, summer 1998, pp215- 223

‘Craft and Power’, a review of Tanya Harrod’s The Crafts in Britain in the 20^th Century [Yale University Press, 1999] Things 10, summer 1999, pp80- 88

Conference report on ‘The Body Politic; the Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft’, Crafts, 161 November/December 1999

‘Aching For the Crash’, A Review of The Virilio Reader, edited by James Der Derian, Blackwell, Oxford 1998, Radical Philosophy 99, January/February 2000

‘Elemental’, a review of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Radical Philosophy 101, May/June 2000

Review of Howard Caygill’s Walter Benjamin; The Colour of Experience, History Workshop Journal, 49, spring 2000 pp235- 242

Review of Ron Mueck’s ‘Giant Boy’ at the London Millennium Dome, Modern Painters, summer 2000

‘Getting Sliced’, a review of Sander Gilman’s Making the Body Beautiful, A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery, Things 12, summer 2000, pp79- 83

Review of Index on Censorship’s exhibition of ‘Photographs They Don’t Want You to See’, Things 12, summer 2000, pp108- 113

Review of Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz; The Witness and the Archive and Victor Jeleniewski Seidler, Shadows of the Shoah; Jewish Identity and Belonging, Radical Philosophy 105, January/February 2001

‘Serial Unhappiness and the Comic Art of Reproduction’, a review of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth, Mute 20, July 2001, pp58- 59

‘Putting the Mode Back into Modernity’, a review of Ulrich Lehmann’s Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity, Things 14, summer 2001, pp55- 59

'Toontown', a review of Richard Fogelsong, Married to the Mouse: W alt Disney World and Orlando, Things 15, winter 2001-02

'Mutinies', London Socialist Historians' Newsletter December 2001

'Revelation, Half-truth and Rumour', Review of Anselm Jappe's Guy Debord and Andrew Hussey's Game of War, Radical Philosophy 113, May/June 2002

A review of Elizabeth Wilson's Bohemians, Fashion Theory, Vol.6, issue 3 2002

Review of 'Siegfried Kracauer: Conference', University of Birmingham, 13-14 September 2002, Radical Philosophy

Georg Lukács, A Defence of History and Class Consciousness; Tailism and the Dialectic, Verso, London, 2000, 182pp

Co-editor (and production manager of issues 2, 3 and 4) of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory ongoing

Co-editor of Revolutionary History ongoing

Member of editorial collective of Radical Philosophy ongoing

Editorial board member of Mad Pride, a book funded by a MIND Millennium Award 1999–2000

Association with the Centre for New Ethnicities’ Research at the University of East London 1995–1999

(The Party and Class symposium in Historical Materialism 3 was translated into Korean and produced as a book, E-Who Publishing House 2000)

Main Editor of Revolutionary History, vol. 8 'Mutiny - Disaffection and Unrest in the Armed Forces', June 2002

Various translations from German into English – major translations to date include Willy Brandt’s 1937 memoirs relating to his experience in the Spanish Civil War [available from Socialist Platform Archive, and on the Internet]; minor work on some historical writings by Thomas Nipperdey [published by Macmillan]; an academic text on Chinese ethnography; a paper on South African archaeology; Waldemar Bolze’s diary of his activities on the Huescan front in the Spanish Civil War, published in The Spanish Civil War: A View from the Left [ed. Al Richardson, Socialist Platform, London 1992]; translation of Oskar Lafontaine’s speech to SPD conference in December 1997, published in New Left Review 227, translation of Karl Radek on war and socialism and Karl Kautsky on 'the oriental question' for Revolutionary History.

EPICENTRE INTERNATIONAL, a volume of poetry [together with Out to Lunch], We Don’t Care publications, London 1995

‘Translations: Walter Benjamin and the Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility’, Camerawork Gallery, London, 26 October 1996

‘Walter Benjamin and Authenticity’, ‘Obscure Objects of Desire?: Reviewing the Crafts in the 20th Century’, University of East Anglia, 10–12 January 1997

‘Spies and Art’, ‘Threats and Containments’, Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 12 March 1997

‘Clement Greenberg, Walter Benjamin and a Different Use of Flatness’, ‘Endings and Transformations; Cultural Studies at the Millennium’, Trent University, Ontario, Canada, 19–24 August 1997

‘Space and West-end Girls; Walter Benjamin versus Cultural Studies’, ‘The Legacy of the Frankfurt School in Cultural Studies’, Salford University, 31 March- 1 April 1998

‘Souvenirs and Forgetting; Walter Benjamin’s Memory-work’, ‘Material Memories; Design and Evocation’, V & A/R.C.A, 16–18 April 1998

‘The City and Everyday Life’, ‘Cities at the Millennium’, UEL/University of Bristol at RIBA 17 December 1998–19 December 1998

Plenary paper and panel discussion on ‘The Optic of Walter Benjamin’, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 24 March 1999

Plenary paper 'Pearls That Were', and panel discussion on ‘Art and the Everyday’, the 1999 Association of Art Historians conference in Southampton, 9–11 April 1999

‘Live to Write, Write to Live: Trading Ideas in Academia and Journalism’, (with Ben Watson) at a conference jointly organized by the Marxist Cultural Network and the Raymond Williams’ Memorial Trust, Nottingham Trent University, 8 May 1999

‘Benjamin, Stars and Stamps: The Politics of the New’, ‘What’s New?’, ICA/Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, ICA, 23 May 1999

‘Spectacles and Signs’, ‘Living in a Material World’, Coventry School of Art and Design, 25 June–27 June 1999

‘Zero-city: Modernist Work and Modern Time’, ‘Time, Work and the Everyday: Raymond Williams Memorial Conference’, University of London, 17 November 2000

‘A Cool Breeze, a Broken Spell: Aura After Aura’, ‘Returns of the Avant-garde …Postwar Art Movements’, University of Westminster, 24–25 November 2000

‘Material Culture and Modernist Vandalism’, ‘Material Cultures’, Birkbeck Graduate Mini-Conference, Birkbeck College, 8 December 2000

'Live to Write ....', Return(s) to Marx?, Institut Français, London 31 May 2002

'Within Spitting Distance: Punks, Professors and Philistines', Return(s) to Marx?, Tate Modern, 1 June 2002

'Komischer Marxismus: Punk und die Bash Street Kids', Hochschule der Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, FRG, 4 June 2002

'Mutinies: Past, Present and Future', Revolutionary History seminar, Lucas Arms, London, 22 June 2002

'Stars, Phosphor and Chemical Colours: Extraterrestiality in the Arcades', Reading Benjamin's Arcades, King Alfred's College, Winchester, 13 July 2002

‘Artifice, Colour and Kracauer – On Film and Nature’, 'Siegfried Kracauer: Conference', University of Birmingham, 13-14 September 2002,

‘Art and Politics, Some Theses’, 25 Years After Stammheim, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 13 October 2002

‘Two Worlds: Culture and Dying in the Global System’, Globalization and its Discontents 2, University of Brighton, 3 November 2002

Respondent at 'Fashion and Modernity' symposium, Central St. Martin's, 31 January 2003

‘Modernity, Furnishings, Interiority; Critical Theory in the Parlour’, ‘Clutter; Disorder in the Spaces of Design, Text, and Imagination’, a conference held at The Art Workers’ Guild in London on 2nd February 1996.

‘Drawing the Line: Painting History and History Painting’, ‘Discipline; An Interdisciplinarian Conference’, 30 November 1996, October Gallery.

‘Colour and Craft; Some Optical Illusion’, ‘The Body Politic; The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft’, organised by Julian Stair, at University of Northumbria at Newcastle, 14–16 September 1999

‘The Absentminded Professor: Etch-a-sketching Academic Forgetting’, ‘Frontiers of Memory’, Institute of Education, London, 17–19 September 1999

‘Leni, Walt and Walter: Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaften’, ‘Rethinking Disney; Private Control and Public Dimensions’, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 9- 12 November 2000

‘The Misery of Sociology: Or a Punker’s Guide to Refusing Recuperation’ (with Ben Watson), 'No Future? Punk 2001', University of Wolverhampton, 21 September- 23 September 2001

'Synthetix', paper given at 'Culture, Capital, Colony', the Association of Art Historians 28th annual conference, University of Liverpool, 5-7 April 2002

'Image Refusal in Iain Sinclair's Refuse Aesthetics: London Orbital, The Film', City Visions: Iain Sinclair, Greenwich University, London

‘Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Disney’s Snow White, Aesthetics and Politics 1936’, Communications Department Research Seminar, London Guildhall University, 6 December 1996

‘Violence and Animation’, Heretic Theory Seminar, University of North London, 1 March 1997

‘Collecting His Thoughts, Walter Benjamin and the Object’, MA History of Design Research Seminar, Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum, 21 April 1997

‘Benjamin In Memoriam; Making History, Making His Story’, Historical Materialism Seminars in Critical Marxist Theory, Linacre College, Oxford University, 6 November 1997

‘Benjamin In Memoriam; Making History, Making His Story’, University of East London, December 1998

‘Benjamin In Memoriam’, European Studies Graduate Seminar, University of Wolverhampton, January 1999

‘Memory, History and Germany’, MA Art in Architecture, University of East London, 4 March 1999

‘Benjamin In Memoriam’, Theory, Culture & Society Seminar series, Nottingham Trent University, 15 April 1999

‘Walter Benjamin, Traces, Mimesis’, Psychoanalysis and History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London 4 November 1999

‘The Arcades Project in Ruins’, MA Modernism Seminar, University of York, 13 December 2000

‘Dreamsleep: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades’, Literary Theory Seminar, University of Sheffield, 21^st January 2001

'Animated Images', seminar paper at 'Modernism and the Moving Image', Tate Modern, 15 February 2002

'The Poetry of Coal: Adorno, Benjamin, Chemistry', guest lecture in series 'Being There', Royal College of Art, London, 5 February 2002

'Mutinies', London Socialist Historians Group, Senate House, 18 February 2002

'The Poetry of Coal', research seminar, Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University College, 12 March 2002

'Coal, Gold and Poetry in Industry', Social and Political Thought Graduate Seminar, University of Sussex, 24 May 2002

'Traces, Outlines and Shadows: Between Mickey Mouse and Hitler', Animation department, Surrey Institute, Farnham, 29 May 2002

'Gold and Coal: Transformation and Exchange in German Chemistry and Romanticism', department seminar, Queen Mary's, University of London, 13 February 2003

'On Celluloid: Modernist Colour and Modernist Transparency in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s', Bahktin Centre, Sheffield University, 3 February 2004

'Discipline; An Interdisciplinarian Conference', with Diane Morgan, 30 November 1996, October Gallery.

'Marxism and the Visual Arts Now', with John Roberts, Andrew Hemingway and Matthew Beaumont, University College London, 8-10 April 2002

September 1982–February 1983: Clerical Assistant, D.H.S.S. Barnet, England

February 1983–August 1983: Care Assistant in a psychiatric care home for the aged, Stuttgart, West Germany