
Prof. Dr. Dirk Wiemann
Chair of English Literature
about
I graduated from Oldenburg University where I read English, German, and Political Science. In 1998, I received my PhD in Comparative Literature for a dissertation on Anglophone exilic literature in Great Britain 1933-1945, funded by a grant from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. On behalf of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), I spent three years as a Visiting Lecturer at the English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad (India) and the University of Delhi, teaching Literature, Media Studies and European Studies. From 2001 to 2006, I worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Magdeburg where I completed my postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) on contemporary Indian novels in English. Before joining the English and American Studies Department at Potsdam University in 2008, I held a permanent post as an Assistant Professor at the University of Tübingen.
I am spokesperson of the DFG-funded Research Unit (Forschungsgruppe) "Collaborations: Assemblages, Articulations, Alliances" (2025- 2028). Within the Research Unit I am principal investigator of the research project "From Bystander to Actor", which focuses on practices and programmes of literature as collaborative.
I am also member of the DFG-funded Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) “minor cosmopolitanisms”.
From 2016 to 2020, I was the director of the bilateral research and exchange network "Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Genre Transactions in World-Literary Space" with the University of Delhi , which was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and its Indian counterpart, the University Grants Commission.
Oh, and if you're interested in why I think that British and Irish literatures still matter today, just check
https://medium.com/@horatioclare/writers-demand-immediate-gaza-ceasefire-65ae44bd7241
and
international research and exchange module
Information and instruction regarding the International and Research module can be found here or at
research and teaching interests
- genre transformations in world literary space
- South Asia studies
- theories and practices of cosmopolitanism
- English renaissance republicanism in literature, politics and aesthetics
- literature and the British Empire
- cultural and literary theory
- postcolonialism