• Interface of literature and science 

• Literature in the foreign-language classroom 

• Life writing 

• Coming-of-age narratives 

• Postmodern fiction  

Having been a member of the English Department since March 2000, I currently hold the position of an Academic Associate and act as subject coordinator for matters concerning the teaching of English Literature at the Zurich University of Teacher Education (PHZH). As such, I am responsible for the organization of the university modules in English literature offered to prospective secondary school teachers.  In addition to teaching many of these modules myself, I coordinat the contacts between the English Department, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Zurich University of Teacher Education. During my own studies at the English Department, I spent some time in Edinburgh, which resulted in my master thesis on the the novels by the Orkney writer George Mackay Brown. My PhD, entitled Perpetual Performance: Selfhood and Representaiton in Byron’s Writing (2007), explores the Byronic self through a prism of modern literary theory and aims to cast light on various conceptions of identity which lie beyond the surface of Byron’s texts. In more recent years, my research has focused on coming-of-age narratives, life writing as well as on the interface of literature and science and its application in the foreign-language classroom.  

I am a member of SAUTE: Swiss Association of University Teachers of English. 

Conferences:  

• With Martin Mühlheim: “Biodrama and the Decentered Subject: Reflections on Anglophone Plays Featuring C.G. Jung as a Character.” 27 August 2024. ESSE 2024, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 26-30 August 2024.  

• “Experiments in Self-Narration: Scientific Autobiographies for the ELT Classroom.” 26 August 2021. This is My Story: Second Storytelling Conference at the Zurich University of Teacher Education, 26-27 August 2021. 

Recent Publications:  

• “Experiments in Self-narration: Scientific Autobiographies for the ELT Classroom.” ‘This is My Story:’ Biographical and Autobiographical Narratives in ELT. Eds. Michael Prusse and Nikola Mayer. Bern: hep, 2023. 69-86. 

• “On Identification and Narrative Identity: Self-Formation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. Imaging Identity: Text, Mediality and Contemporary Visual Culture. Eds. Johannes Riquet and Martin Heusser. Cham: Palgrave, 2019. 123-145.