Research Areas
There is an active and vibrant research climate at the Department and students undertaking research find a very supportive and helpful environment in which to work. Our academic staff members have an excellent track record in supervising a wide range of research topics, both at MA and PhD level. Our current research focuses on the following topics:
Dr Hanna Bingel-Jones: German literature from the 19th to the 21st century; narrative theory and literary memory studies; contested memories of the GDR in post-Wende literature; religious discourses in literature and postsecular studies; literature and its didactics in the context of foreign language teaching
Dr Gert Hofmann: Critical theory; modern German literature; law and literature; Ut pictura poiesis; literary anthropology; holocaust studies.
Dr Uschi Linehan: German Literature, World Literature, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, the Scholarship of Teaching, Learning and Research which encompasses the Multiple Intelligences Theory and its application to the Teaching and Learning of Language, Literature and Culture as well as Drama and Theatre Pedagogy – Performative Teaching, Learning and Research.
Dr Rachel MagShamhráin: German Cultural History, with an emphasis on appropriation, borrowing and theft, especially in the form of translation, adaptation, and other appropriation (including cultural theft).
Dragan Miladinović: Language Pedagogy; performative teaching and learning; language Teacher Education; teaching and learning in Higher Education; critical applied linguistics; translation studies.
Prof. Caitríona Ní Dhúill: German, Austrian and comparative literature from the late nineteenth century to the present day; utopian fiction and theory; gender theory; life writing and biography; ecocriticism, environmental humanities and literature in the Anthropocene.
Dr Claire O' Reilly: German-Irish biographies and relations; life-writing and narratives; Resistance biographies (WWII) and their legacies; Intercultural learning, Year Abroad Studies and digital learning, new approaches to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Dr Emma Riordan: Language teaching and learning; curriculum design; language education policy; language teacher professional development; teaching and learning in Higher Education.
Prof. em. Manfred Schewe: Performative Foreign/Second Language Didactics: the theory and practice of performative teaching, learning, research; Arts in Education with an emphasis on culturally specific concepts in the area of theatre and education, especially Drama in Education and Theaterpädagogik; literature and culture as/in performance; 20th/21st century European and World theatre.
Dr Barbara Siller: Identities in narratives and discourses; generational novels and the representation of memory; literary topographies and spatial studies; self-translation and literary multilingualism, contemporary (Austrian) literature.