Research in German Studies
RAE success for German studies at Manchester
The results of RAE 2008 have shown that German Studies at Manchester is one of the best departments for research in the country. According to a ranking based on the volume and quality of its research, our department was rated third out of 29 in the country. With 55% of its research deemed 'World Leading' or 'Internationally Excellent', it is in the very highest tier of UK German departments.
German Studies forms part of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures which RAE 2008 has shown to be among the leading units of its kind in the country. Moreover, the University of Manchester has emerged from this RAE as one of the UK's top four or five universities for research and one which boasts a breadth of research achievement spread across more distinct discipline areas than any other UK institution.
Staff research interests range from modern German history, film and cultural studies, to Goethe, Romanticism, and modern German literature. A lively research culture is maintained through regular research seminars and academic conferences such as 'Literary Value and Canon Formation in the German Tradition after Postmodernism' (2004), 'Municipalism - Regionalism - Nationalism' (2006), and 'Creolising Europe' (2007).
Research Projects
- GerManc Project
- Representations of the Past The Writing of National Histories in Europe
- The Modern Restoration: Discourses of style in German literature (1930-1960) (completed)
Research Centres
- Centre for Translation and Cultural Studies (CTIS)
- Centre for Cultural Forms of Politics in Modern Europe
- Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
German Studies Research Profiles
David Bell: German literature and the history of ideas and religion in the eighteenth century and Goethezeit, especially the work of Lessing, Herder and Goethe; Goethe's West-östlicher Divan.
Professor Martin Durrell: German sociolinguistics and dialectology, Modern German grammar and usage, Historical phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages, Comparative lexical semantics
Cathy Gelbin: 19th and 20th century German literature and culture; German-Jewish culture; Holocaust Studies (international literature and film, life histories, historiographical approaches); Gender and Queer studies; Film Studies.
Matthew Jefferies: All aspects of German history 1871-1945, with a particular interest in social and cultural reform movements (including lifestyle reform and naturism); architecture and town-planning; the environment; national monuments; historiography. Current projects include a cultural history of Hamburg (for Signal books' Cities of the Imagination series); and a jointly-edited collection of essays on Rolf Gardiner, 'An honorary German'? Rolf Gardiner and Anglo-German Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century.
Margaret Littler: German Women's Writing, Gender Theory, Cultural Theory, Migration and Diaspora, Turkish-German Culture
Stephen Parker: 20th Century literature and cultural politics; Brecht; Peter Huchel; Modern German cultural and literary journals, especially the journal Sinn und Form.
Matthew Philpotts: Cultural policy and artistic practice in the German dictatorships; comparative approaches to cultural production and dictatorial rule; the role of literary-cultural journals in literary and intellectual history; the life and works of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht; theoretical approaches to authorship and the literary field (Foucault and Bourdieu).
Judith Purver: German Romanticism, especially Eichendorff and Tieck, international affinities and reception of German Romanticism, especially by Kierkegaard; Romantic translations; Vormärz; German women writers 1770-1830; literature and theatre in Dresden.