Research and Networks

My research interests include:

  • resilience in anglophone literature (long 19th century)
  • literary realism
  • Medical Humanities
  • Victorian Studies
  • Podcast Studies, genre and form (esp. fan podcasts)
  • Cultural Studies
  • Media Studies, (Podcast) intermediality
  • New formalist methodologies
  • Gender, sexuality and agency

Current Research Projects

Postdoc/Habilitation (Working Title): Tracing the Elastic Mind: Resilience in Prose Fiction of the Long Nineteenth Century

My current project explores the presence of resilient characters in anglophone novels from the long nineteenth century through the concept of the ‘elastic mind’. The metaphor points to the etymological root of resilience as a literal rebounding or returning to form and its common usage in the physical tradition of the natural sciences to describe a spring-like material quality. It is used by writers throughout the long nineteenth century, including, among other prominent authors, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. The project focusses on a selection of canonical case studies from the long nineteenth century (1789-1914) to explore how different widely read authors conceptualised resilience through their characters’ elasticity (of mind) or lack thereof. I consider the novels through a narratological analysis and perspective informed by new historicism to trace the contemporary social, political, economic and psychological discourses that shaped changing ideas about mental faculties, self-development and heredity. The aim of the study is to gain new insights into historical conceptualisations of resilience and I posit that this perspective on the literary negotiation of resilience can shed new light on the current, seemingly ubiquitous, neoliberal co-option of the concept.

Mediating Medicine: Health and Illness in the Victorian Age

Julia Ditter and I are organising an online workshop on Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Literature for the DACH Victorianists taking place on 5 December 2025. The Deadline for Proposals is 30 September 2025: Call for Papers: 8th DACH Victorianists Workshop

Past Research Projects

PhD Thesis: Fan Commentary Podcasts: A Formal Genre Analysis

Using the cultural studies informed formalist methodology by literary studies scholar Caroline Levine, my work explores how commentary manifests as a form in three distinct fan podcast genres: rewatch and reread podcasts, recap podcasts and review podcasts

Creative fan labour flourishes in the digital landscape of current participatory culture and is increasingly visible in podcasting, which is characterised by a low entry threshold, ease of accessibility and affordances for intimacy, authenticity and community building (cf. Berry, Llinares et al., Meserko, McGregor). “‘[F]annish’ podcasts” were described as early as 2006, when Kristina Busse noted podcasts featuring “reviews, commentary, and even creative responses such as audio plays and recorded fan fiction” (n.p.). These fan podcasts are characterised by their hosts’ thorough “scene-by-scene, almost line-by-line” (cf. The Fawlty Towers Podcast) engagement with a single or franchised media text and span so-called reread or rewatch podcasts previously addressed by Hannah McGregor (2019) as well as recap podcasts that, i.a., feature current and on-going media texts.

Using the formalist cultural studies methodology developed by Caroline Levine (Forms, 2015) to perform close analytical listenings of a range of fan commentary podcasts, I contend that these can be defined through their dominant commentary form. My dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines work in the emerging field of podcast studies and fan studies through a new formalist methodology to consider the affordances of the podcast medium and explore their productivity for commentary podcast hosts and their participatory practices as fans. While podcasting booms and fan activities become increasingly visible in mainstream media, fan podcasts have not been extensively researched let alone considered through a formalist cultural studies lens. My dissertation thus seeks to address the current lack of research into podcasts genres by considering the fan commentary podcast genre through its aesthetic and social formal structures.

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The Uses of Form: Theory – Methodology – Pedagogy

Together with Julia Ditter I organised a collaborative and interactive online workshop titled “The Uses of Form” which took place on 22-23 July 2022. We are interested in different perspectives on new formalism(s) and want to explore the theoretical, methodological and pedagogical uses of form understood as “an arrangement of elements—an ordering, patterning, or shaping” with aesthetic, material, political and social dimensions (Caroline Levine, 2015). You can read more about the workshop on the project website: https://theusesofform.wordpress.com/

Networks & Academic Service

I am currently active in the following roles:

  • DiversityBuddy at the University of Graz
  • contact person for collaborations between schools and the English Department and the University of Graz

I am a member in the following networks/associations:

Previous associations:

Are you a doctoral student interested in podcast studies? Consider joining the Podcast Studies PhD Group on Discord or via the google mailing list:

Podcast Studies PhDs