The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is a non-profit foundation established by the Federal Republic of Germany for the promotion of international research cooperation. It enables highly qualified scholars not resident in Germany to spend extended periods of research in Germany and promotes the ensuing academic contacts.  The two-year postdoctoral fellowship is awarded to US scholars who are recent PhDs for a period of 13 to 24 months to carry out research in Germany.

The project Rubin will be pursuing is entitled "Material Memory:  Marzahn, Socialism, and the GDR" and will focus on the communist-era housing projects of the East Berlin suburb Marzahn.  It will attempt to identify the extent to which personal memories were contained within material possessions and surroundings--and the extent to which the complete rebuilding and replacement of those surroundings during the construction of Marzahn changed the relationship between personal memory and citizens' understanding of history.  This project will form the basis of Rubin's second book.