Professor of English Literature

• Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (2024-25; eight months)
• Visiting Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University London (2019; one month)
• Visiting Fellow, English Department, University of California, Davis (2018; three months)
• Visiting Member, Jesus College, University of Cambridge (2016-2017; six months)
• Visiting Fellow, English Department, University of East Anglia (2016-2017; six months)
• Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (2012-2013; twelve months)

• Heisenberg Programme, German Research Foundation (five-year research grant, 2020-2025)
• Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), 2018
• Project funding (three years), "Literature, Liberalism, and the Laissez-Faire Economy, 1776-1900", Elite Programme for Postdocs, Baden Württemberg Foundation (funding for PhD student and additional funding for conference organisation and travel)
• Research Fellowship, German Research Foundation
• Feodor Lynen Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
• Michael Foster Memorial Scholarship, awarded by the University of Oxford (waiving university and college fees during doctoral study)
• PhD scholarship, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
• Baden-Württemberg Scholarship (to study at Yale University)
• Scholar of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), 2003-2010
• Grants for the organisation of international conferences from ZIF (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University), Thyssen Foundation, DFG, and other institutions
• Travel grants from DAAD, the University of Oxford, and other institutions

• "Beyond the Event: Rethinking Revolution", University of Regensburg, 2025 (with C. D. Blanton)
• "Politics and Literature", UBC Vancouver, 2024 (with Janice Ho and Matthew Taunton)
• "The Aesthetics of Failure: Disruption, Loss, Decline", Notre Dame Global Gateway, London, 2024 (with Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg)
• "Writing Collectivity: Forms, Figures, Agency", University of Regensburg, 2024 (with Matthew Taunton)
• "Modernism and Byzantium", Istanbul (Haliç University), 2024 (with Christos Hadjiyiannis and Demet Karabulut)
• "Writing Revolution: Radical Traditions and their Literary Legacies from the Nineteenth Century to Today", University of Regensburg, 2023 (with Anna Vaninskaya)
• "The Paris Commune at 150", London, The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, 2021 (with Charlotte Jones)
• Conference, The Political Uses of Literature: Comparative Approaches, Theoretical Perspectives. LMU Munich, 2020 (with Ivana Perica); funded by the Graduate School “Globalization and Literature” and LMU Universitätsstiftung.
• Conference, Radical Styles: Forms, Commitments, Traditions, University of Freiburg, 2019.
• Conference, The Proletarian Moment: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Comparative Perspectives, ZIF (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research), University of Bielefeld, 2018 (with Sabine Hake); funded by ZIF
• Conference, Post-, Neo-, Anti-: The Futures of Critique, University of Freiburg, 2018
• Conference, Modern Literature, Organisations, and Institutions, University of East Anglia, 2017 (with Rachel Potter and Matthew Taunton)
• Conference, Symmetry, Proportion, Seriality: Convergences in Science and the Arts, Academia Europaea Conference, University of Freiburg, 2015 (with Andreas Buchleitner, Monika Fludernik, Martin Middeke); funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
• Conference, EUCOR PhD and MA Conference, University of Freiburg, 2014 (two days; with Wolfgang Hochbruck and Monika Fludernik)
• Conference, "Anti-Communism: Culture, Literature, Propaganda", Institute of English Studies, London, 2013 (with Matthew Taunton); funded by the Leverhulme Trust
• Conference, "Cultivating the Economy: Literature, Politics, Economics, 1870-1940", Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, 2013; funded by Thyssen Foundation
• Conference, “Utopian Spaces of British Literature, 1890-1945”, English Faculty, University of Oxford, 2009 (with Rosalyn Gregory)

Invited Guest Lectures and Keynote Lectures

• "Form, Formlessness, and 'Radical Bildung'", University of Konstanz, 2025.
• "From Weltliteratur to World Revolution: The Left Novel of Formation", University of Exeter, 2025.
• Raymond Williams Lecture, "World Literature and the Work of Revolution", University of Manchester, 2025.
• "Literature for the World Revolution: Selfhood and Radical Struggle", All Souls College, University of Oxford, 2025.
• "Writing Revolution: World Literature, Selfhood, and Radical Struggle", University of Edinburgh, 2025.
• "Internationalism and the Work of Revolution: A Radical History of the Bildungsroman", London Modernism Seminar, London, 2025.
• "Radical Bildung and Left Weltliteratur (Goethe, Nizan, Godard)", University College London, 2025.
• "Revolutionary Pedagogy and Collective Formation", UC Berkeley, 2024.
• "No Home but the Struggle: The Novel of Formation and the Formlessness of History", Queen's University Belfast, 2024.
• "From Weltliteratur to World Revolution", LMU Munich, 2024.
• "Walter Benjamin's Failed Connections", Signal & Sign (Symposium in Honour of David Trotter), University of Cambridge, 2023.
• "The Problem of Second Bildung: Genre at Modernity's Periphery", CUNY Graduate Center, 2023.
• Keynote, "World-Shaping in the Radical Bildungsroman", How Do Stories Shape Our World? (inaugural English Faculty postgraduate symposium), University of Cambridge, 2023.
• "Decolonizing the Novel: Formative Fictions in the Work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o", University of Gour Banga (India), 2021.
• Keynote, "Substanceless Subjectivity: Crisis and Collectivity in British Experimental Fiction", University of Leuven, 2020.
• "Modernism and Revolution: Literary Politics before the 'Political Unconscious'", Harvard University, Mahindra Humanities Center, 2019.
• "Julien Green and the Murmur of the Sea", University of Cambridge, 2019.
• "Modernist Internationalism", Global Modernisms / Global Modernities Summer School, University of Hamburg, 2019.
• "Auden, Rilke, and the Island-Mind", University of Cambridge, 2018.
• "Realist Montage: Realism and Formal Experiment at the Mid-Century", Lewis and Clark College (Portland), 2018.
• "Rethinking the Aesthetics of Classlessness", University of California (Santa Cruz), 2018.
• "The Reformist Literary Mode and the Welfare State", University of Colorado (Boulder), 2018.
• "Surface Reading", Centre for Uses of Literature, University of Southern Denmark, 2017.
• "Speculative States: British Literature's Hegelian Moment", Center for Welfare State Research, University of Southern Denmark, 2017.
• "Means and Ends: Anglistische Perspektiven auf das Verhältnis von Literatur und Politik", University of Erlangen, 2017.
• "Towards a Literary Prehistory of the Welfare State", English Department, Durham University, 2017.
• "Proletarian Modernism in the Long 1930s", English Department, University of Manchester, 2017.
• "States of Welfare: Modernism and the Reformist Literary Mode", English Department, University of East Anglia, 2017.
• "Democracy and Dictatorship: Literary Visions of Classlessness", English Department, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017.
• Keynote, "Outside of the Frame of Theory: Literature and the Place of Politics", Outside the Frame of Theory Conference, University of Freiburg, 2017.
• "Slow Politics: Modernism, Reform, and the Idea of the Welfare State", English Faculty, University of Oxford, 2016.
• "Proletarian Modernism", English Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2016.
• "The State Beyond Governmentality: Literary Reformism and the Emergence of the Welfare State", English Department, University of Notre Dame, 2016.
• "Modernism and the Idea of the Welfare State", English Department, University of California, Davis, 2016.
• Keynote, "The State Beyond Governmentality", Welfare and Welfare Narratives Conference, Center for Welfare State Research, University of South Denmark, 2016.
• "Automatic Subjects", Novel Marxisms Workshop, Center for the Study of the Novel, Stanford University, 2016.
• "Government and the State: Late Victorian Literature and the Politics of Reform", School of English, University of Sussex, 2016.
• "The Apolitical Unconscious of 1930s Literature", English Department, University of Gent, 2014.
• "Rethinking the 1930s: Literature, Politics, and the Communist Voice", English Department, Stanford University, 2013.
• "'Higher Feelings' and the State: Literature, Economic Discourse, and the End of Laissez-Faire, 1870-1930", Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Centre for "History of the Emotions"), Berlin, 2012.
• "Awkward Moments: Modernism, Melodrama, and the Politics of Affect", English Department, Brunel University, 2011.

Conference Papers (Selected)

• "Britain's Long Hegelian Moment", Modernist Studies Association, Toronto, 2019.
• "Proletarian Modernism", American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Utrecht 2017.
• "'Machinery with a Common Purpose': Reformism and the Ends of the State", Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, 2016.
• "Proletarianiziation and Its Discontents", Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, 2016.
• "True Ownership: Edward Carpenter and the Nationalization of Land", NAVSA, Phoenix, 2016.
• "Edward Carpenter, Land Nationalisation, and Late Victorian Popular Politics", BritCult Conference, University of Erlangen, 2015.
• "The Long 1930s", Writing Literary History, University of Leuven, 2015.
• "The Socialist Bildungsroman and the Time of the Revolution", Anglistentag, Hanover, 2014.
• "Genealogies of Welfare: Ideas of the Common Good in E.M. Forster", Modernist Studies Association, Pittsburgh, 2014.
• "'A Romance about Capital': E.M. Forster and the Idea of the Welfare State", Modernist Communities, Paris, 2014.
• "Politics Without Footnotes", Modernist Studies Association, Brighton, 2013.
• "Spiral Descent: Communist Anti-Communism after World War II", Anti-Communism: Literature, Culture, Propaganda, Institute of English Studies, London, 2013.
• "Forms of Preparedness: E.M. Forster, Risk, and Unemployment Insurance", Cultivating the Economy, Columbia University, 2013.
• "The Drama of Preparedness: Unemployment Insurance and E.M. Forster's (New) Liberal Aesthetic", On Liberties: Victorian Liberals and Their Legacies, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden (UK), 2013.
• "'Playing with Bright Images': The Making and Unmaking of Surrealist Black Humour", Space Between Conference, DePaul University, Chicago 2013.
• "Auden, Isherwood, and Post-Liberal Citizenship", Modernist Studies Association, Las Vegas, 2012.
• "A Lost Generation: The Literature of the 1930s and Writing after Modernism", Generation M: Resetting Modernist Time. UVA, Amsterdam, 2012.
• "'Brittle Ghosts': Surrealism, History, and Black Humour in the 1930s", History and Humour. Freiburg, 2012.
• “The Poverty of Surrealism: Social Critique in Early Mass-Observation”, The ‘Space Between’ Conference, McGill University, Montreal, 2011.
• "What Is It Like To Be a Rat? Thomas Pynchon and Early Cold War Glimpses of the Post-Human", Research Seminar, Regensburg University, 2011.
• "A ‘Radical Aesthetic’? Social Facts and Poetic Authority in Mass-Observation”, Modernism and Utopia, University of Birmingham, 2010.
• “‘The Heart of Standing Is You Cannot Fly’: William Empson and Taking Sides”, Utopian Spaces of British Literature and Culture, 1890-1945, University of Oxford, 2009.
• “Henry Green, Maurice Bowra, and the ‘Heritage of Symbolism’”, Twentieth-Century Literature Research Seminar, University of Oxford, 2009.
• “The Uses of Poetry: From T. S. Eliot to William Empson”, MLA Convention, Poetry Division (chaired by Susan J. Wolfson and Alan Golding), San Francisco, 2008.
• “Poetical Remains: Robert Browning in the Marketplace”, Bodies and Things: Victorian Literature and the Matter of Culture Conference, University of Oxford, 2008.

• Editorial board, Critical Quarterly
• Advisory board, CUSP: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Cultures
• Advisory committee (elected), PMLA
• Member of the Board of Directors, English Department, University of Freiburg (2017-19)
• Member of PhD Selection Committee, German Academic Exchange Service (2010-14)
• Referee for Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press; Bloomsbury; PMLA; ELH; Literature and History; Modernism/Modernity; Victorian Network; Key Words: Journal of the Raymond Williams Society; Modern Philology; German Research Foundation; Research Foundation Flanders

• Academia Europaea (elected member)
• International Association of University Professors of English (elected member)
• Young Academy of Europe (elected member, 2014-21)
• Modern Language Association
• American Comparative Literature Association
• Modernist Studies Association
• North American Victorian Studies Association
• British Association of Modernist Studies
• The William Hazlitt Society

PhD Theses

• Nikolina Hatton, “Decommodified Things in English Novels and Political Economy, 1790-1850“ (summa cum laude; 2018)
• Mir Ali Hosseini, “Liberal Inflections: Writing and Politics at the Mid-Twentieth Century” (summa cum laude; 2026; the thesis won the Dr. Katharina Sailer Prize for the year's best PhD dissertation in British and American studies)
• Evelin Stumberger, "Nineteenth-Century Extraction and the Great Emigration" (ongoing)
• Gabriela Dafinger, "How Green Was Her Valley: The Place of Women in Industrial and Postindustrial Welsh Fictional Writing, c. 1930s - 1980s"
• Hannah Eder, "Figuring Protest: Towards a Literary and Cultural History of Collective Resistance, 1979-2022"

MA Theses

• Andrea Claudia Geanta, “Love and Business in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Other Works” (2014)
• Oleksandra Dragan, “Monsters from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Contemporary Cinema” (2015)
• Nina Brunner, “Writing against the Cash Nexus: The Representation of Work in George Eliot’s Novels” (2015)
• Teona Micevska, “Modernist Female Dandyism: Queerness of Form and Identity“ (2015)
• Christian Lassen, “Peritextual Elements in Charles Dickens and Mark Twain” (2016)
• Anirudh Sridhar, “Metaphorical Mathematics and the Symbolism of Shapes and Numbers in Modernist Poetry“ (2016)
• Albina Okanovic, “Victorian Governess Rewritten: Representations of Femininity in the Victorian Sensation Novel“
• Mir Ali Hosseini, “Writing against the Grain: Style in Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida” (2017; diese Abschlussarbeit gewann den Fakultätspreis für die beste MA-Arbeit)
• Kerrin Kluewer, “The Work of Mourning: The Poetry of Charlotte Mew and Mina Loy” (2017)
• Hannah Rehm, “Alternative Ecologies: The New Nature Writing and Its Precursors” (2017)
• Elissa Wittke, “Networks of Things: The Design Theory of Ray and Charles Eames” (2018)
• Saina Tarverdy, “Fabulating Nomadic Subjects: The Figure of the Becomer in Modernist Literature” (2019)
• Kalina Janeva, “Riffing on the Page: The Racial Politics of Blues and Jazz in Interwar Modernist Writing” (2020)

Since 2020: Numerous theses supervised at the University of Regensburg. 

BA Theses

• Esther Gnandt, “‘There must be some secret at the bottom of all this’: Crime and Gender in Lady Audley’s Secret” (2015)
• Caroline Böckling, “A Perfect Product of Society: Women and Social Power in Pride and Prejudice and The Age of Innocence” (2015)
• Julia Ditter, “Mental Illness as a Symptom of Ideological Oppression: Social Criticism in Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is to Keep Breathing and Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon” (2016)
• Laura Vartolomei, “Cuckoldry in English Renaissance Drama“ (2016)
• Katharina Schantz, “Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour Narratives as Ethnographic Writing: Smollett’s and Sterne’s Accounts of Italy and France“ (2016)
• Mathias Jacoby, “Gothic Short Fiction: A Comparative Analysis of Le Fanu and Hawthorne” (2016)
• Jonas Scheid, “Victorian Detective Legacies: Charles Dickens and Terry Pritchard” (2018)
• Alina Ruschen, “We Can Be Heroes: Illness in Young Adult Fiction” (2018)
• Viktor Chlowka, “The Documentary Impulse: British Literature and Film in the 1940s” (2019)
• Mareike Reinfandt, “Marginalized Voices in Troubled Times: The Northern Irish Novels A Son Called Gabriel by Damian McNicholl and Milkman by Anna Burns” (2019)
• Sophia Wolf, “A Female Rendering of Space in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage” (2019)

Since 2020: Numerous theses supervised at the University of Regensburg.