Research in German Studies

Our research engages with the full range of German-language culture from 1750 to the present. We specialise in literature, thought, film and visual culture, and society. We approach these diverse traditions, histories, and media from a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including aesthetic theory, social theory, gender studies, postcolonial theory, theories of world, globality and cosmopolitanism, and ecological thinking, though always maintain a strong sense of historical context from which cultural products arise.

We not only make a strong contribution to the world of scholarship, but also speak directly to real-world cultural, social, political, and environmental problems. As such, our work feeds into and enriches our Arts Faculty research themes such as literature, language, and translation, cultural industries and cultural value, environments, global and transnational histories and cultures, ethics, politics and social justice, and criticism, theory and aesthetics - which in turn intersect with the university's research spotlights.

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Since its establishment, German Studies at Warwick has ranked among the top German departments in the UK. Our colleagues consistently produce internationally recognised publications, as is reflected our performances in the REF exercises in

German Studies at Warwick has a strong tradition of research excellence. Colleagues regularly publish internationally recognised work, as reflected in our performances in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 and 2021. Our projects regularly attract third-party funding, with three Leverhulme Research Fellowships awarded to German-Studies colleagues since 2022. Our research has always been marked by innovation. While we were trailblazers in defining multi-disciplinary, theoretically underpinned German Cultural Studies in the late twentieth century, our drive to innovate has in more recent times been reflected in a series of awards of UKRI money made to colleagues via Warwick's Research Cultures funding streams for their investigation of co-produced, community-focussed research.

We also enjoy a vibrant research community. The Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies, sponsored by Warwick Humanities Research Centre, features colleagues, national and international guest speakers, and research students presenting both work-in-progress or advanced, conference-style papers. Our researchers work within a host of national and international research networks. We are members of the PhD Net and Peer Net research networks, which out of the Justus Liebig University, Giessen and allow us to engage in Co-Tutelle PhD supervision and international research programmes for advanced scholars.

Please browse the links below to find out more about our research foci, current projects, forthcoming events and individual staff research specialisms.