Research

The research interests of staff in the Department of German cover the entire range of German Studies. Library holdings are especially strong in the areas of German and Austrian history, 17th-century literature (including original material in Special Collections), Weimar Classicism and Expressionist periodicals. The Library holds the Bibliothek der Deutschen Literatur, a major collection of primary literature on microfiche.

Research Themes

The research interests of our members of staff offer a wide choice of theme. They include:

• Literature from the medieval period to the present
• German and Austrian history and politics since 1800
• German socio- and historical linguistics
• Writing by and for women
• Text and image studies
• The connections between science, philosophy and literature

We also boast strong areas of shared expertise which facilitate interdisciplinary research in, for example, drama; writing by and for women; gender; travel literature; the Reformation and Early Modern period (1500-1700); the Classical Age; the politics and culture of the Third Reich.

Some Research Staff Profiles

Dr Mark Allinson, Modern German and Austrian History, especially GDR History, political and social history.

Dr Steffan Davies, German Literature and history, primarily from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Dr Nils Langer, Linguistics; sociolinguistics; historical linguistics.

Dr Debbie Pinfold, Post-1945 German literature, especially prose fiction; literary responses to the Third Reich; representations of childhood; nineteenth-century women's writing

Professor Robert Vilain, 19th- and 20th-century German and Austrian literature; poetry, Modernism; the avant-garde, comparative literature; Franco-German literary relations, Hofmannsthal, Yvan and Claire Goll, Rilke,Trakl, English, French and German crime fiction, the relations of literature and music