Each semester, the Graduate School invites one or two visiting researchers to the school for one to two months. The visiting researchers make themselves available to doctoral candidates for conversation, give lectures about their current research, or lead -related workshops.

The visiting researchers generally come from international universities and receive a research grant from Freie Universität Berlin. They can request funding from FSGS for organizing events, are supported administratively by the management, and have access to work space.

The basic requirements for inviting guests to Freie Universität Berlin [German] apply. If interested, please contact management.

Visiting researchers 2019

Dr. Meredith Reiches (University of Massachusetts) and Prof. Dr. Françoise Lavocat will complete a project in the sociology of literature at FSGS and will be available to doctoral candidates for conversations in February and March.

Visiting researchers 2018

Prof. Dr. Michel Chaouli directs the "The Philological Laboratory: Models of Criticism Beyond Critique" [German]. He teaches in the Department of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and has been an Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies since March 2018.

Prof. Dr. Mai-Lin Cheng's research interests include the poetry and prose of the British Romantic period, the subject of her first book, British Romanticism and the Literature of Human Interest  (Bucknell University Press 2018). Her new project is on the construction of self and space in the manuscript commonplace books of the Romantic period. 

Dr. Sotirios Paraschas works on the aesthetic, economic, and legal conditions of nineteenth-century authorship with a particular emphasis on the history of intellectual property. He is the author of two monographs: The Realist Author and Sympathetic Imagination (Legenda, 2013) and Reappearing Characters in Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is currently working on a monograph project provisional entitled Reading (for) the Author: Genius and Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century.

Dr. Rana Raeisi examines Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's dramas with regard to the themes of tolerance, but also the role of religious discussion and that of the image of women portrayed are central to her research project. The research desiderata should help to avoid the prejudices, to eliminate misunderstandings between people and to give them peace. She also plans to translate Lessing's works into Persian (Farsi) so that Persian-speaking people who do not know German can have access to these Enlightenment works.

Prof. Dr. Chunjie Zhang teaches and conducts research at UC Davis. The Germanist works on Postcolonial Studies, Cosmopolitanism, Transculturality, and Global Modernisms. She will be available for conversations with doctoral candidates at FSGS in June.

Visiting researchers 2017

Dr. Libby Meintjes teaches and conducts research at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg at the Institute for Literature, Language, and Media. In 2017, she was at FSGS to advise and support our doctoral candidates.

Prof. Dr. Yoshihiko Hirano is a Germanist at the University of Tokyo. He frequently returns to FSGS to conduct research as a guest of the Einstein project Transpacifica [German].

Prof. Dr. Caroline Welsh conducts research on literature and medicine, contexts of aesthetic theory in the history of science, and literature and music. She advises doctoral candidates at FSGS and teaches at the Institute of German and Dutch Languages and Literatures.

Visiting researchers 2016

Prof. Dr. Wolfram Ette studied and obtained his doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin: Freiheit zum Ursprung. Eine Interpretation von Thomas Manns »Höllenfahrt«. In 2009, he obtained the habilitation at TU Chemnitz with Kritik der Tragödie. Über dramatische Entschleunigung. Prof. Ette teaches and conducts research at FSGS and the Institute of Comparative Literature at FUB.

Prof. Dr. Kanichiro Omiya is a Germanist at the University of Tokyo. As a guest of the Einstein project Transpacifica [German] he frequently returns to conduct research at FSGS.

Prof. Dr. Susan Squier teaches and conducts research in the English Department at Penn State University as Brill Professor of English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As an Einstein Visiting Fellow in the project Pathographics, she regularly visits FSGS and advises doctoral candidates.

Visiting researchers 2015

Prof. Dr. Jean-Marie Schaeffer from EHSS Paris is visiting FSGS from mid-May to mid-July. Our member of the Advisory Board has done a lot of work over the years for the Graduate School and its doctoral candidates. During his visit, he will give lectures on topics like Empiricism and Aesthetics and will be available for conversations with doctoral candidates. An eight-hour workshop about Aesthetics and Biology is also in the works.

Prof. Dr. Sven Spieker from the University of California, Santa Barbara is visiting FSGS in January and February. Prof. Spieker teaches and conducts research as a Comparatist in German and Eastern European literature, with a focus on contemporary art. Together with artists, he offers a workshop series about 'Didactic Arts.'

Prof. Dr. Stefan Keppler-Tasaki teaches and conducts research at the University of Tokyo. His main focus is the connection between literature, film, and technology. As an Einstein Visiting Fellow with the project Transpacifica [German], he regularly visits FSGS and is available for conversations with doctoral candidates.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Poch is a Japanologist at the University of Hong Kong. He teaches and conducts research on Japanese literature of the 19^th and 20^th century, with a focus on emotionality and literature.

Visiting researchers 2014

Dr. Boris Roman Gibhardt is a literary scholar who focuses on text-image relations. Until 2013, he was chargé de recherche at the German Center for Art History Paris, and he is currently working on his habilitation about popular aesthetics in Weimar Classicism.

Prof. Dr. Dorothea von Mücke teaches German literature at Columbia University. She teaches and conducts research on aesthetic and literature of the 18^th century.

Prof. Dr. Andrew J. Webber teaches and conducts research at the University of Cambridge on German and Austrian culture and literature. His main focus is narratives, film, and cultural theory of the modern age and the 20^th / 21^st centuries.

Visiting researchers 2013

Prof. Dr. Mai-Lin Cheng, professor of literature at the University of Oregon, specializes on the poetry and prose of English Romanticism.

Prof. Dr. Galili Shahar is a comparatist and Germanist at Tel Aviv University. She conducts research on German literature, Hebrew literature, and Jewish culture.

Prof. Dr. Yvonne Spielmann from Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore conducts research on video as a reflexive medium, intermediality and hybrid media, as well as hybrid cultures in a broader sense.

Prof. Dr. Chenxi Tang from the University of California in Berkeley is a Germanist. He is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and other discourses, particularly law and natural sciences.

Visiting researchers 2012

Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Strowick from Johns Hopkins University is a Germanist. She teaches and conducts research on German and Austrian literature and culture of the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries, with a focus on poetology of knowledge, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies.

Prof. Dr. Joshua Weiner is an author and holds a professorship in the English Department at the University of Maryland. He teaches and conducts research on British and Irish literature after 1900, and offers creative writing classes.

Visiting researchers 2011

Prof. Dr. Stefanos Geroulanos is an associate professor in the Department of History at New York University. His main focus is on German and French intellectual history of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. 

Prof. Dr. Thomas Y. Levin from Princeton University conducts research on media history and was associated with the Graduate School as an Einstein Visiting Fellow from 2011–2014.

The Germanist and comparatist Prof. Dr. David Martyn from Macalester College in Minnesota teaches and conducts research on literary theory and European culture from the 18^th century to the present. One of his main focuses is on German philosophy and literature composed by non-native speakers.

Visiting researchers 2010

Prof. Dr. Leonard Barkan is a Comparatist at Princeton University and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. His main research interests are the literature of the European Renaissance, particularly the relationship between literature and the fine arts.

Prof. Dr. Danièle Cohn has been conducting research at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris since 1991 and joined the faculty at University of Paris (Paris I and Paris X) as a professor in 2002. Her main focus is on aesthetic philosophy.

Prof. Dr. Claire Colebrook is a professor of English literature at Penn State University. She teaches and conducts research on contemporary European philosophy, feminist theory, literary theory, contemporary music, dance, visual culture, and political theory. 

Prof. Dr. Jane O. Newman is a Comparatist at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include English, French, German, Italian, and modern Latin literature of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the history of comparative studies, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, the Renaissance and the Baroque as well as correspondences between the early modern age and the modern or postmodern period. Since 2010, she has been spending some time at FSGS each year.

Prof. Dr. Ritchie N. N. Robertson is a Germanist at Oxford University. He has published numerous monographs and articles on German and Austrian literature, e.g. about Thomas Mann, Kafka, and Heine, about Nietzsche and the "Jewish Question" in German literature from 1749 to 1939.

Prof. Dr. John H. Smith teaches and conducts research on modern German literature at the University of California in Irvine. His main focus is on German literature and philosophy from the enlightenment through the 20^th century.

Prof. Dr. Janet A. Walker is a Comparatist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her research interests include the modern age in Europe and Asia, origins and developments of the novel, theory and the poetics of the novel, the propagation of the novel in non-Western cultures, literature, visual and material culture of the West and their relationship to non-Western cultures, historical and anthropological aspects of thecollection, colonialism and the collection.

Prof. Dr. Christopher Young from the University of Cambridge was associated with the Graduate School as a Permanent Visiting Fellow from 2010 – 2012 and visited Berlin for several research visits. The Germanist conducts research on medieval German literature and culture. One of his main focuses is the history of sports in European cultures.

Visiting researchers 2009

Prof. Dr. Bettina Bildhauer from the University of St Andrews was a visiting researcher at FSGS as a Humboldt scholar. The literature and film scholar teaches and conducts research on medieval German literature and culture.

Prof. Dr. Renate Lachmann from the Universität Konstanz conducts research on and taught Slavic literature and Eastern European history.

Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Mengaldo is a Germanist at the Universität Hannover. Her main focuses of research are the intertextuality of 20^th century poetry, poetry and rhetoric of short prose, poetics of knowledge, and edition philology.

Prof. Dr. Jaques Le Rider teaches and conducts research on German and Austrian literature of the modern age at EHESS Paris.

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Schwab from the University of California, Irvine is a Comparatist with a focus on American literatures. 

The Dutch Germanist Prof. Dr. Anthonya Visser from Leiden University teaches and conducts research on contemporary German literature, prose, drama and poetry of the GDR as well as history and remembrance in German literature and film.