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 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.
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.