My main areas of interest are: authorship, fame / celebrity, 20th and 21st century German literature and culture, the transmission and reception of cultural products in the contemporary world (the question of cultural impact), translated literature and its reception.

I welcome proposals in all areas of 20th and 21st century German literature and culture, and am also interested in supervising comparative projects that deal with issues of authorship and celebrity, the relationship between the media and the culture industry, and questions surrounding the transmission and reception of culture in the contemporary world.

GERM100/101 Cult - 'The Shock of the New: German 20th Century Culture, History, and Society' (convenor)

GERM233 - Becoming German: identity-formation in modern German society and culture

DELC213 - The Writer and The Text in 20th Century Literature

GERM301 - German Language: written skills

DELC351 - Literature and Fame in Contemporary Germany (convenor)

I am interested in conceptualising and analysing how authors - and with them literature - exist within the world. My monograph on Günter Grass and authorship, along with a co-edited volume of essays examining international dimensions in Günter Grass's work, were both published in 2008. My monograph currently in preparation, entitled 'Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age', widens the approach taken in respect of Grass, focusing on the literary strategies devised by a representative selection of well-known authors from the 1960s to the present for negotiating their own publicly constructed identity, as well as considering the changing social and cultural contexts of authorship over the period. In other recent publications I have focused particularly on ideas of literary celebrity and the mass mediation of highbrow authors in popular media. All of this work feeds into the AHRC-funded fellowship, 'The Author and the World: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Authorship', which will run from 2014-2016 and allows me to develop my conceptual interest in authorship with colleagues working in various different disciplines at Lancaster and other international institutions.

I am also interested in broader questions surrounding the production, transmission and reception of cultural products in the contemporary Western world. A co-edited (with Lyn Marven) volume of essays was published on this topic in 2010: Cultural Impact in the German Context: Studies in Transmission, Reception, and Influence (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010).

Research Grants Awarded

 2014-2016: AHRC Early Career Fellowship to fund the project and associated interdisciplinary research hub, 'The Author and the World: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Authorship'.

2010-2012: Lancaster Early Career Grant, to support a series of research trips to literary and media archives in Germany to complete work on my second monograph, Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age, and associated peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes.

2007-2009: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, held at the University of Liverpool, to begin work on my second monograph, provisionally entitled Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age.

2002-2005: University of Oxford Scatcherd Scholarship to provide fees and living expenses for my doctorate, since published with Oxford University Press as Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass.

2001-2002: Alexander von Humboldt scholarship, extraordinarily granted by the University of Oxford Theodor Heuss selection committee, to allow me to begin work on my doctorate, attached to the Freie Universität, Berlin.

Membership of Associations

Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland

British Comparative Literature Association

Women in German Studies (UK and Ireland)

Modern Languages Association of America

German Studies Association of America