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Dr James Hodkinson

Reader in German (on leave 2024-25)

Tel: +44 (0)24 7615 0387/ Internal: 50387
Email: j dot r dot hodkinson at warwick dot ac dot uk

Room: FAB 4.55 (Faculty of Arts Building)
University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL

About

Dr James Hodkinson is Reader (senior associate professor) in German within Warwick's SMLC, where he has worked since 2006. He has taught German language, literature, intellectual history, and culture at a range of universities in the UK and Ireland since 1996 and has been a visiting scholar at Monash University, Stockholms Universitet, Sweden, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In 2023-24 he was Honorary Principal Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and from September 2024 he is Leverhulme Research Fellow.

James is a specialist in German culture from the eighteenth century to the present, with particular interests in Islam, religion and (post)secular modernity, Romanticism and its legacies, and in the growing field of sound studies. He has also become a recognised practitioner, mentor and leader in different forms of public engagement, engagement-led research methodologies, and 'impact' projects. He teaches a wide range of undergraduate courses, supervises research at MA, PhD and post-doctoral levels, and has held a number of key administrative roles in German Studies, across the School of Modern Languages and Cultures and within the Warwick Institute of Engagement. Between 2017-19 he served as Head of German Studies.

Research interests

James has published in the following fields:

  • cultural representations of Islam in Germanophone thought, scholarship, literature and visual culture, from the Enlightenment to the present;
  • religion in contemporary societies and the 'postsecular' turn; religion in modern, German-speaking Europe;
  • the role and representation of sound and music across modern German Culture from 1800 to the present; German Popular music; sound studies and the 'sonic turn' in the arts and humanities;
  • 18th-19th century German culture; German Romanticism, its historical context, modern and postmodern receptions; constructions of gender in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought and literature.

Between 2010-14 James founded and managed an international research network dedicated to engaging in ongoing debates surrounding nineteenth-century cultural representations of East-West encounters: read more about the international Occident-Orient Research Network here.

In 2016 he co-founded the German Pop Music Studies network together with Dr Uwe Schütte, which was dedicated to bringing this field into the heart of teaching and research agendas in UK German Studies.

In March 2024, James was awarded a twelve-month Leverhulme Research Fellowship from September 2024 to complete work on his sole-authored book project on German-Islamic kinships.

Public Engagement

James is a practitioner, innovator, and leader in the university's culture of public engagement. He continues to work on projects that deliver demonstrable social, cultural, and educational impact, both nationally and internationally, and also seek to re-model the relationship between academia, artistic practice, and community-based research: find out more about his research and innovation projects here.

James:

Research Supervision:

James Hodkinson:

  • currently co-supervises (with Prof. Dr. Ansgar Nünning) of Annalina Benner's PhD on popular music in contemporary anglophone fiction.
  • currently co-supervises of Hannah Roberts' PhD on Clara Schumann's performance and music pedagogy, together with Professors Chris Dingle and Sian Derry (BCU)
  • mentored Dr Julia Hartley, Leverhulme Early Research Career Fellow, on her project on Francophone literary representations of Persia during the long nineteenth-century.
  • supervised Dr Brian Haman's PhD on "Literary Representations of the Journey in German Romantic Prose".
  • co-supervised Dr Julia Effertz's PhD thesis on the "Image of the Female Singer in French and German Literature around 1800" until 2006.

James welcomes interest from potential researchers seeking to work with him, either collaboratively or in a supervisory capacity.

He has examined PhDs, both nationally and internationally, at St Andrew's University, Birkbeck College, Royal Holloway, Kings College London and Monash University.

Administrative roles

  • Chair WIE Learning Circle, 'Communities and Co-Production' (2021-23)
  • Director of Recruitment and Admissions, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures and in German (2020-23)
  • Head of German (2017-19).
  • Director of Widening Participation, School of Modern Languages and Cultures (2018-19).
  • Director of Academic Communications, SMLC (2014-16)
  • Examinations Secretary, Admissions Officer and Director of Graduate Studies in German Studies.
  • External examiner in the fields of German Studies, Translation Studies (Masters level) and Comparative Literature at three UK universities to date.

Recent publications

Full list of publications here.

Professional Associations

  • Soul City Arts, Birmingham
  • Internationale Novalis Gesellschaft
  • German Studies Association of America
  • Association of German Studies, GB.
  • German Studies Association of Ireland

Qualifications

  • BA (Dunelm) First class honours: 1996
  • PhD (Trinity College Dublin): 2001
  • PGCE (Liverpool) with distinction in pedagogical theory: 2002

Advice and Feedback Times

I am on conducting research as part of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship during the academic year 2024-25. Please contact me directly by email on urgent matters.

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