Research

I am a fromer cotutelle doctoral student working on contemporary anglophone speculative fictions under the supervision of Professor Elisabeth HerrmannLink opens in a new window and Prof. Dr. Ansgar NünningLink opens in a new window (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany).

My dissertation project critically engaged with the epistemic value of speculative fictions, their ability to narrate future scenarios and to critically reflect on present concerns such as anthropogenic climate change, late capitalism, and global inequality. In merging cultural narratological aspects and theories with a sociological approach, this study focused on the affordances and limits of contemporary speculative fictions’ aesthetic and thematic forms in reflecting on current concerns and configuring cultural imaginaries of future/s. Of special interest are modes of storytelling and the complexity of storyworlds created.

Research Interests

Anglophone Science and Speculative Fiction

Narrative Theory

Ecocriticism and Cli-Fi

Teaching and Supervision

I am a research assistant at the English Department of Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and teach BA and MA seminars in literary and cultural studies.

Winter 2022/23 - Basic course Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies

Summer 2022 - Herstories - Feminist Utopias and Dystopias

Winter 2021/22 - The Fundamentals of Narratology (online compact course)

Summer 2021 - In Other Worlds: Margaret Atwood's Speculative Fiction

Winter 2020/21 - Science Fiction around the Globe

Summer 2020 - "I'm a woman writer, not an imitation man." - Women in Science Fiction.

Winter 2019/20 - An Introduction to Utopian and Dystopian Literature; An Introduction to Diaspora Studies and Fictions of Migration

Supervised BA theses:

The Construction of the Asian Other in Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse (2012-2016) novels and their Netflix adaptation Shadow and Bone (2021)

Vampires: Fantastical Monstrosities or Social Critique. The Role of the Vampire in Popular Media from the mid-1990s to the early 21st Century

Europe - Utopia or Dystopia? Literary Negotiations of the European Project

Between Evil Queen and Dragon Princess: A Critical Analysis of the Female Presentation in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-2019)

Publications

Projects

I am the co-organizer of an online lecture series that ran during the summer of 2021. Shaping the Future: Female and Queer Perspectives on Possible FuturesLink opens in a new window had several goals that built on each other: Through an online lecture series via Zoom, a website, and YouTube channel, the project sought to empower queer and female voices with an eye toward futures, global coexistence, and in the discourse surrounding the Corona pandemic as both crisis and opportunity. Weekly lectures followed by live Q&A sessions in the digital summer semester of 2021 gave queer and female perspectives on the world and our shared future the space they needed. The project was funded by the Ideas Competition for the Advancement of Women of the Justus Liebig University Giessen.

Conferences and Events

"Politicising Temporalities: Divergent and Incommensurable Time Regimes." Troubling Time(s). Questioning Prevailing Notions of Time in the Study of Literature and Culture. European PhDnet Literary and Cultural Studies (26-28 October 2022)

"New Materialisms: Approaches in Transdisciplinary Research and Theory" with Rick Dolphijn (26 April 2021, co-organiser)

“'And we spiders play dirty. ' NonHuman Entanglements and Multispecies Multiperspectivity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014).” Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture: Ecoculture. Universidade Católica Portuguesa (07-11 July 2020)

Postgraduate workshop "Ecocriticism and Narrative Form" in collaboration with the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE) with a keynote by Prof. Dr. Erin James (University of Idaho) (9-10 December 2019, co-organiser)

“Geo-Graphia – On the Deconstruction of the Nation-State in Speculative Fiction.” Alternative Geographies Symposium. Aarhus University (7-9 October 2019)

Memberships

International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (Giessen, Germany)

European PhDnet "Literary and Cultural Studies" (Alumna)

Science Fiction Research Association