College position(s)
Fellow
Subject
Modern and Medieval Languages
Specialising in
I specialise in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century working-class literature, particularly depictions of precarious labour and class, self-representations of precarious workers, and literary activism.
Degrees, Awards and Prizes
BA, MA, PhD
Research themes
My recent research has focused on representations of precarious labour and literary negotiations of class identity in German literature. I have worked on texts from around 1900 by authors such as Max Kretzer, Lu Märten, Ernst Preczang, August Otto-Walster and Paul Göhre, examining questions of genre, form and precarity in non-canonical works. I have sporadically published on labour and precaritisation in contemporary German and Flemish literature and co-edited the volume Literary Representations of Precarious Work, 1840 to the Present (with Bart Philipsen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), as well as Reimagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture (with Liesbeth François, Leuven University Press, 2024).
I am also the author of Der Mythos des Unbestechlichen (WBG, 2024). Based on my doctoral dissertation, this book traces the reception of the French Revolution in the German-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century, focusing particularly on the literary depiction of the controversial figure Maximilien Robespierre. Drawing on concepts of cultural memory and political theology, I demonstrate how the history of the French Revolution was used to negotiate contemporary political and cultural issues, including questions of political agency, ideology, legitimacy, and sovereignty.
Currently, I am working on two interrelated lines of research. Firstly, I am preparing a co-edited volume with the working title ‘Writing on the Edge’, which will explore the heuristic and analytical potential of the concept ‘edginess’ in discussions on liminality and marginality. Building on this project, a second strand of research will examine literature in German concerning precarious and defiant subjectivities on the margins of society around 1900. Particular attention will be given to how these subjectivities are formed through affective relations and a combination of factors at the intersection of class, gender, sexuality, and transnational mobility.
Responsibilities
I lecture and supervise on German literature from the nineteenth century to the present, including modules on precarious lives at the edges of the modern city (GE5); nationalism, cultural memory, and identity in the German-speaking world (GE6); and revolutions on the stage from Georg Büchner to Bertolt Brecht (GE12). I also teach translation from German into English (GEB2).
Other
Before I started in my current role in the MMLL Faculty in January 2026, I held positions as Assistant Professor in German at Trinity College Dublin, Teaching Fellow at Durham University, and Postdoctoral Researcher of the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) at the University of Leuven. I received my PhD in Literature from the University of Leuven in 2017, where I also obtained a BA and MA in Literature and Linguistics (specialising in German, Latin and Dutch) as well as an MA in Literary Studies.
Extra links
Re-imagining Class is accessible in an open access format on the website of Leuven University Press: https://lup.be/book/re-imagining-class/