I joined TU Braunschweig as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher in Literary and Cultural Studies in 2017, having received my PhD in English literature from the University of Münster. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts in English Studies and the Study of Religions/Ethics and a Master of Arts in Advanced Anglophone Studies from the University of Hannover. After completing my MA, I taught German language and literature as a DAAD teaching assistant at University College Cork, Ireland. From 2013 to 2017, I was a member of the DFG-funded Research Training Group Literary Form at Münster. My doctoral research also took me to the North of England, where I spent a term as a visiting graduate student in the Department of English Studies at Durham University.
I am currently substitute professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language at TU Braunschweig, with a focus on teaching Anglophone literatures and cultures. I am a member of Deutscher Anglistikverband, German Society for the Study of British Cultures (Britcult), German Society for English Romanticism (GER) and the British Association of Decadence Studies. I am also active in the DACH Victorianists network, MADS (Modernism, Aestheticism Decadence Studies) network and the interdisciplinary Gender-Netzwerk at Braunschweig.
Material Culture Studies, intermediality, intertextuality
Teaching English:
Literature and education for sustainable development
Climate change literacy
Poetry in the EFL classroom
Book Project "Decorative Materialities: Textiles and the Fabrication of Abundance in British Literature at the Fin de Siècle"
My second-book project is concerned with the literature, material and visual culture of the late Victorian period. The monograph investigates literary representations of and intermedial 'dialogues' with fabrics and textile objects in the late nineteenth century (c. 1870 to 1900). I examine interrelations between textual forms and textile materiality at a time when the literary field and the production and use of decorative fabrics underwent radical transformations, drawing on contexts such as the Arts and Crafts movement, Aestheticism and Decadence, and the New Woman as well as the environmental and colonial entanglements of late Victorian textile culture. While firmly situated in the historically-oriented fields of Victorian studies and fin-de-siècle scholarship, my research also emphasises the topicality of this period to our present moment. Nineteenth-century textile culture resonates in twenty-first-century concerns with the materiality, ethics, and sustainability of art and consumer objects in post-industrial, digital societies. I have received funding for this project from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Braunschweiger Zentrum für Gender Studies, and the William Morris Society in the United States.
I teach across all periods and genres in British and Irish literature and culture, mostly focusing on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I currently teach in the BA module B3: Mediating Languages and Cultures and Master of Education module M1: Teaching English. I have previously taught the "Introduction to Literary Studies" and "Introduction to Cultural Studies", survey courses on Irish and British literature and advanced courses on, for example, “Contemporary British Nature Writing”, “Romanticism and Childhood”, "Die Klimakrise in Literatur und Unterricht", “The Brontë Sisters”, “Aestheticism and Decadence” and “British Popular Culture of the 1990s”. I am happy to supervise Master's theses in Teaching English as a Foreign Language with an emphasis on mediating literatures and cultures.
"Romantic Childhood, Education, and Activism in Dara McAnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist." Romantic Ecologies. Ed. David Kerler and Martin Middeke. Trier: WVT, 2023. 185-200.
Review of Sackgasse Brexit: Reportagen aus einem gespaltenen Land, by Peter Stäuber (Rotpunktverlag, 2018), Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.1 (2019): 109-112.
"Naturbilder und Umweltdiskurse im Animationsfilm: Findet Nemo und WALL-E." Public lecture, Studium Generale, TU Braunschweig, 2018.
Recent Conference Papers and Invited Talks (2021-2024)
"'Modern oriental objects in sufficiently small quantities': Appropriations of Material Culture in Mary Eliza Haweis’ The Art of Decoration." MADS 2024: Global Encounters. Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, September 2024.
"Teaching Aestheticism and Decadence in Germany." Teaching Modernisms online event, hosted by Modernist Studies Association et al. August 2024.
"Poetry in the EFL Classroom." Guest Lecture. Institute of English and American Studies, Universität Hamburg, December 2023.
"Decadent Textile Materialities in Sarah Grand's Short Fiction." Late Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory & Attitude. 4th DACH Victorianists Online Workshop. July 2023.
"Orientalist Appropriations in the Victorian Interior: Mary Eliza Haweis’ The Art of Decoration." East-West Cross-Cultural Encounters: Adaptation and Appropriation. Chungbuk National University, South Korea, March 2023.
"Textile Materiality in the British Arts and Crafts Movement: The Greenery Tapestry (1892/1915)." Von den Dingen: Material, Stoff, Rest und Ressource. Ringvorlesung des MA-Studiengangs Kultur der technisch-wissenschaftlichen Welt. TU Braunschweig, January 2023.
"The Romantic Child as Environmental Educator: Dara McAnulty's Diary of a Young Naturalist." Romantic Ecologies. 19th International Conference of the Society for English Romanticism. Universität Augsburg, October 2022.
"Textile Ecologies and Aesthetic Decor in the Poetry of Alfred Hayes." Victorian and Edwardian Interiors. Annual International Conference ofthe Société Française d’Etudes Victoriennes et Edouardiennes (SFEVE). Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France, January 2022.
"Victorian Interiors and the 'Noble Arts': Morris & Co, at Clouds." Investigating the Super-Rich: Representations of Great Wealth in British Cultures. Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures. Universität Leipzig, November 2021.
"Unveiling Truth and Beauty: Textiles in Sarah Grand's Short Fiction." BADS Jeudis 2021: Decadende & Aestheticism: Truth,Beauty, Exoticism, and the Sublime in 19th Century Fashion. Decadence Research Centre/Goldsmiths, University of London, October 2021.
"Butterflies in the Sink: Invasive Environments in Thomas Eccleshare's Pastoral." Dystopian/Utopian Theatre in Britain after 2000 and its Political Spaces. ZiF Bielefeld, March 2021.
