My research interests encompass contemporary German-speaking culture in a number of forms - literary, filmic, and more broadly socio-political. I'm very interested in the Nobel-prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek and continue to publish articles and chapters on her work. My recent work and publications have focused on issues concerning literary and cultural protest, or resistance against the extreme right in present-day Austria.
Contemporary German Cultural and Literary Studies, including film studies, single-author/playwright/film-maker studies, women's studies, and especially interested in Austrian Studies
GERM 100/101: German Studies Part I, 'German in Context'
GERM 200: German Language: Oral Skills
GERM 201: German Language: Written Skills
GERM 233: Becoming German: Identity formation in modern German society and culture
DELC 212: Society on Screen: The Language of Film
DELC 352: Images of Austria: National Identity and Cultural Representation
DELC 320: Dissertation supervision
My main research focus currently is towards a monograph entitled Resisting Haiderisation. This will contextualise and analyse various different forms of cultural resistance to the populist right-wing in Austria. The impetus is presented by the rise to instutional power of Austria's Freedom Party (FPÖ) in 2000 when it formed a coalition government with the People's Party. Since that time there have been a great number of works, texts, performances, films, essays, songs and so on that have consciously expressed resistance and criticism of this turn to the right. My book will provide a context for reading some of the more important examples.
My recent publications have focused on intercultural themes in contemporary, Austrian culture, dealing, for example, with Austrian-Slovenian cultural history and conflict, with multicultural influences in twenty-first century literature and film, with the representation of sport in culture and as constitutive of national identity, and with popular music and films as examples of cultural protest.
Research Grants
2016 FASS Impact and Knowledge Exchange grant to assist with a project based around Elfriede Jelinek's work and centring on 'Female Authors/Female Labours: Writing, Dramaturgy and Translation' with Karen Jürs-Munby (LICA)
2011 Austrian Cultural Forum, London to fund keynote speakers to a Lancaster conference, ‘Jelinek in the Arena’, July 2012
2010 British Academy Overseas conference grant
2008 AHRC Research Leave Grant
2003: AHRB Research Leave Grant
Editorial and International Boards
I am a member of the international advisory and editorial boards of the journal Austrian Studies, the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre (based at the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, London) and the Elfriede Jelinek Forschungszentrum, Vienna.
The Elfriede Jelinek Research Centre in Vienna is on line at: http://www.praesens.at/elfriede-jelinek-forschungszentrum/.
I have also been elected to the board of the Austrian Studies Association (a US based professional body).
Membership of Associations:
In addition to being a member of the above bodies, I am also a member of the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland and Women in German Studies (UK and Ireland)
