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About Me

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​I am a Senior Lecturer in German, Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. I have previously held research and teaching positions at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna (2010-2012), in the Department of German Studies at the University of Nottingham (2012-2015, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship), in the Department of German at King’s College London (2016), and in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham (2017). My particular area of specialism is in modern and contemporary Austrian studies. I first became interested in Austrian literature and culture through studying the work of the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. This interest developed into a comparative study of the legacy of the Second World War, topography and identity in the prose works of Ingeborg Bachmann and her contemporary Thomas Bernhard, which was the subject of my PhD thesis (funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and completed in Cambridge in 2011). In 2011 my first book manuscript (based on my PhD thesis), entitled Walking Through History: Topography and Identity in the Works of Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, was selected as the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in German Studies. The book was published by Peter Lang, Oxford, in 2013.

During my PhD work, I undertook my first research visit to Vienna (generously supported by the AHRC), where I had the opportunity to work with Ingeborg Bachmann's literary estate. The completion of my PhD thesis saw me return to Vienna to work at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography (2010-2012), where I had the opportunity to carry out more archival research in connection with a biographical project on the Austrian modernist writer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. 

The award of a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship in 2012 saw me return to the UK to commence my own research project on 'The Treatment of the Past in Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film and Culture', within the Department of German Studies at the University of Nottingham. During the course of my Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2012-2015) I undertook two further research visits to Vienna, Austria, in order to carry out archival research at the Documentation Centre for Modern Austrian Literature and the Austrian National Library, and to interview writers and filmmakers. My second monograph, arising out of this project and entitled The Long Shadow of the Past: Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film, and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017), was published in June 2017. The book has been widely reviewed and was included in CHOICE's 2018 Outstanding Academic Titles. ​

I am also the sole editor of a multi-author volume arising from an international conference on Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film and Culture (University of Nottingham, 13-15 April 2015), which I organised as part of the dissemination activities for my project. The edited volume, entitled New Perspectives on Contemporary Austrian Literature and Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018), was published in September 2018. 

For more information about all of my research, teaching and outreach activities, please visit the relevant pages of this website.