Newly appointed professors since Fall/Winter 2014/2015

Spring/Summer 2019: Department of Philosophy

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Prof. Dr. Konstantin Pollok

Konstantin Pollok received his Dr. phil. (2000) and his Dr. phil. habil. (2007) from Marburg University, Germany, where he was Wissenschaftlicher Assistant from 2001-2007. He obtained several fellowships from prestigious institutions such as the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation and the Stanford Humanities Center where he spent the academic year 2006-07, the Andrew Mellon Foundation as well as the American Council for Learned Societies to carry out a research project on Kant at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2009-10 and 2012-13. In 2007 he joined the Philosophy Department at the University of South Carolina where he received tenure in 2009 and taught until 2019. His research focuses on early modern philosophy, and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in particular. For his work on Kant’s Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft – Ein Kritischer Kommentar (Hamburg: Meiner, 2001) he received the 2004 International Junior Kant Award, nominated by Professor Dieter Henrich. He has published two more monographs, Begründen und Rechtfertigen: Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis zwischen rationalen Erfordernissen und prävalenten Handlungsgründen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), and Kant’s Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For the latter work he was awarded the 2018 North American Kant Society Book Prize for Senior Scholars.

 

Winter/Fall 2017/2018: Institute of Film, Drama, and Empirical Cultural Studies

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Kristina Köhler

Kristina Köhler was appointed to the W1-professorship for Film Studies at the Institute of Film, Drama, Media and Cultural Studies. After finishing her studies of European Media Culture at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and the Université Lumière in Lyon, she joined the Department of Film Studies in Zürich, where she received her doctoral degree in 2016 for her study „Der tänzerische Film. Frühe Filmkultur und moderner Tanz.“ She spent time as a Visiting Researcher at the University of California Berkeley, Yale University, the Universität der Künste Berlin and the University of Vienna. In her research she focuses on film history of the 20th century, history of theory and knowledge in film, dance and body culture, media archaeology, as well as media change and gender. She is co-publisher of the journals Montage AV und the book series Film-Konzepte.

 

Spring/Summer 2017: Institute of Film, Drama, and Empirical Cultural Studies

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Prof. Dr. Gabriele Schabacher

Gabriele Schabacher was apppointed to the new W2-professorship for Media Culture Studies at the Institute for Film, Drama and Empirical Cultural Studies. Professor Schabacher comes to Johannes Gutenberg University from Weimar, where he was Professor for History and Theory of Cultural Techniques. Before her appointment, she had also coordinated the DFG graduate college "Locating Media" in Siegen. In her research she focuses on Culture and Media Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Mobility, and Cultural Techniques of Restoring, amongst others.

 

Spring/Summer 2017: Department of English and Linguistics

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Prof. Dr. Arne Nagels

Arne Nagels was appointed to the W2-professorship for General Linguistics at the Department of English and Linguistics in September 2017. He studied Linguistics and Psychology in Aachen and earned his doctoral degree in Marburg. His research focuses on the "Neurobiology of Language." He is interested in linguistic processes and their malfunction in the human brain. For his reserach he uses fMRT and EEG.

 

Spring/Summer 2017: Institute for Slavic, Turkic and Circum-Baltic Languages

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Prof. Dr. Julian Rentzsch

Julian Rentzsch was appointed to the W2-professorship for Turkology at the Institute of Slavic, Turkic and Circum-Baltic Languages (ISTziB). He studied in Bonn, Frankfurt and Mainz, where he also earned his doctoral degree. He was granted scholarships for research in Szeged (Hungary) and Skopje (Macedonia). His research focuses mainly on Turkic linguistics with special interests in semantics, morphosyntax and language history of the Balkan Turkish and Central Asian Turkic languages. He teaches on linguistic topics as well as Turkish literature.

 

Fall/Winter 2016/2017: German Department

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jessica Nowak

Jessica Nowak was appointed to the W1-professorship for Historical Linguistics of German at the Institute of German Philology in November 2016. She studied German Philology, Spanish and Communication at the University of Mainz, and earned her doctoral degree with a thesis on historical and contrastive verb morphology (“On the Existence of an 8th Ablaut Class – A Contrastive Analysis of its Evolution in German, Dutch and Luxembourgish”). From 2008-2012 she was research assistant at the project “The German Surname Atlas (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas)” (Mainz/Freiburg) sponsored by the German Research Foundation. Her research focuses on contrastive historical linguistics of Germanic languages (especially their morphology), onomastics and graphemics.

 

Fall/Winter 2016/2017: German Department

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Prof. Dr. Anja Müller

Anja Müller is W2-Professor for language acquisition and didactics of German at the German Department since October 2016. She studied Patholinguistics at the University of Potsdam and earned her doctoral degree in 2010 within the scope of the special research project “Information Structure.” In her research and teaching, she focuses on children’s first and second language acquisition and language training in kindergarten and in elementary/secondary school.

 

Fall/Winter 2016/2017: Department of Philosophy

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Annika Schlitte

Since October 2016, Annika Schlitte has been a junior professor (W1) for philosophy with a special focus on the relation to social sciences and cultural studies. After studying in Bochum, she worked as a lecturer in Bochum, Eichstätt and Wuppertal and obtained a PhD in philosophy with a dissertation on Georg Simmel’s philosophy of money in 2010. From 2011 to 2016, she worked as a research assistant and speaker of the Interdisciplinary Research Academy “Philosophy of Place” at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Her research interests include the philosophy of the early 20th century (philosophy of culture, phenomenology, hermeneutics), aesthetics, theories of place and space, and the relation between philosophy and economics.

 

Fall/Winter 2016/2017: Department of English and Linguistics

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Monika Class

Monika Class was appointed to the W1-professorship for English Literature and Culture in September 2016. She specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth-century studies, the theory and history of reading and the novel, and medical humanities. She graduated with her BA and MA (Magister Artium) at Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg and conducted her doctoral research on the early transmission of Kantian philosophy in British Romanticism at the English Faculty of the University of Oxford and Balliol College. She received her PhD in 2009. Funded by the European Council in 2010, she conducted postdoctoral research at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London. Subsequently, she was a fixed-term lecturer and co-convenor of the MSc in Medical Humanities at KCL’s English Department before being elected as a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz in 2014.

 

Spring/Summer 2016: German Department

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Prof. Dr. Barbara Thums

Barbara Thums has been W3-Professor of modern German literature at the German Department since April 2016. After studying at the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, she taught in Gießen and Tübingen. Her main areas of research and teaching are German literature from the 18th to the 20th century in the European context, with a special focus on the 18th and 21st century. Her main research area is the history, theory and poetics of knowledge, as well as literature, culture and media theory. In these areas she focuses on literature and anthropology, ethics and aesthetics as well as literature and ecology.

 

Spring/Summer 2016: Institute of Film, Drama, and Empirical Cultural Studies

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Mirko Uhlig

Mirko Uhlig was appointed to the W1-professorship for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the Institute of Film, Drama and Empirical Cultural Studies in April 2016. After studying Volkskunde (Cultural Anthropology), Anthropology and Constitutional, Social & Economic History (VSWG) in Bonn, he worked as a research fellow at the LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte (Institute of Regional Studies and Regional History) from 2008 until 2010. Within the scope of a DFG-supported project, Uhlig received his doctoral degree in 2015 with an empirical thesis on contemporary shamanism in the Eifel. His teaching and research focuses on forms and functions of religiousness and spirituality in everyday life, reenactment, health and culture, everyday life in rural regions, as well as methods of fieldwork.

 

Spring/Summer 2016: Institute of Book Studies

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Corinna Norrick-Rühl

Corinna Norrick-Rühl has joined the Faculty 05: Philosophy and Philology at JGU as assistant professor (Juniorprofessorin) of Book Studies. She received her Master of Arts in English Literature and Culture and Book Studies after studying in Mainz und Udine (Italy). Norrick-Rühl, a German-American, has been working at the Institute for Book Studies since 2009 (PhD in Book Studies in 2013). In 2014, she was visiting professor of Book Studies in Münster (stand-in for Prof. Dr. Gabriele Müller-Oberhäuser).
In her research and teaching, she focuses on the market for children’s and young adult books as well as on Anglophone book and publishing history and trans-national book history.

 

Fall/Winter 2015/2016: Department of English and Linguistics

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Prof. Dr. Susanne Wagner

Susanne Wagner joined the Department of English and Linguistics as a W2-professor for English Linguistics in October 2015. After completing her doctoral studies at the university in Freiburg, she taught in Kent, Chemnitz and Oxford. She is interested in supervising quantitatively oriented sociolinguistic topics in general and comparative-contrastive studies in particular. Dialectological topics, as well as qualitative sociolinguistic studies are also welcome.

 

Fall/Winter 2015/2016: Institute of Film, Drama, and Empirical Cultural Studies

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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Benjamin Wihstutz

Benjamin Wihstutz has been appointed to the W1-professorship for Drama Studies at the Institute of Film, Drama and Empirical Cultural Research in November 2015. He studied at universities in Berlin and Paris, and earned his doctoral degree at the FU Berlin in 2011 with a thesis on contemporary political drama. His research focuses on contemporary drama, the German drama around 1800, performance and handicap, as well as aesthetical and political theories. In his current research project, he analyzes the history of aesthetic and political judgement in drama.

 

Fall/Winter 2015/2016: Department of Romance Studies

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Prof. Dr. Christoph Gabriel

Christoph Gabriel has been appointed to the W3-professorship for Romance Linguistics (French and Spanish). He taught Romanic Languages at the University of Hamburg from 2007 to 2015, where he also served as speaker of the special research project 538 “Multilingualism.” His areas of research include phonology and Syntax of Romanic languages, as well as languages in contact, multilingualism and language acquisition (L1 and L2). Currently, he manages a project on the development of multilingualism over time.

 

Fall/Winter 2015/2016: Department of Romance Studies

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Prof. Dr. Antje Lobin

Antje Lobin was appointed to a W2-professorship for Italian and French philology in November 2015. After studying at the universities in Gießen, Dijon and Rome, she completed her post-doctoral studies on conversational research, sociolinguistics as well as media linguistics at Justus Liebig University Gießen in February 2015. In her current research she focuses on media language, conversational research, political linguistics, onomastics, economic linguistics and research on linguistic borrowings.

 

Spring/Summer 2015: Department of English and Linguistics

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Prof. Dr. Rainer Emig

Rainer Emig has been appointed W3-Professor for English Literature and Culture at the Department of English and Linguistics. He was educated at the University of Frankfurt and has taught in Cardiff, Regensburg and Hannover. He has strong interests in the New Literatures in English, especially African and Asian writings, and in Ireland and Wales. His theoretical interests range from psychoanalytic theory via deconstruction to postcolonial questions. His cultural interests focus on gender and sexuality as well as questions of normality, power, and violence, but also youth and popular culture.

 

Fall/Winter 2014/2015: Department of English and Linguistics

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Prof. Dr. Axel Schäfer

Axel Schäfer has been appointed to the new W2-professorship in American Studies with a focus on history. Professor Schäfer comes to Johannes Gutenberg University from Keele University in the UK, where he was Professor of American History and Director of the David Bruce Centre for American Studies. In his research, he focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century US intellectual and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on religion and politics, transatlantic social thought, and public policy.

 

Fall/Winter 2014/2015: Institute of Film, Drama and Empirical Cultural Studies

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Prof. Dr. Alexandra Schneider

Alexandra Schneider was appointed W3-Professor for Media Dramaturgy at the Institute of Film, Drama and Empirical Cultural Studies in September 2014. Before her appointment, she had taught at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where she was head of the MA Film Studies. Her research interests include digital narration and media archaeology (with a focus on theory and the history of portable media). She is also interested in the relation between media and globalization.