I’m a writer and academic working at the intersection of literature, knowledge production, and public discourse. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology, I explore how meaning is generated through cultural and scholarly practices, how normative orders are embedded in texts, and how literature and academic discourse shape democratic publics.
My work combines interpretive methods with institutional analysis, drawing on resonance theory, cultural sociology, and critical social theory. I often focus on authorship—not just as a professional role, but as a cultural form that reflects and shapes values, knowledge, and social structures. I’m especially interested in the aesthetic articulation of critique and in literature as a site of social self-observation. At present, my scholarship examines the normative foundations of resonance theory through the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer (in German), and I develop a comparative critique of Jeffrey C. Alexander’s civil sphere theory and Habermasian deliberative democracy (in English).
Another key area of research is scholarly authorship. My book Authorship and Publishing in the Humanities (Cambridge University Press, 2023), based on my doctoral thesis, examines the symbolic and institutional frameworks that shape scholarly authorship in the humanities. Earlier, I have worked on projects relating to research evaluation, open access, and research cultures in Germany and the UK, with a particular focus on discourses in the humanities. I’m an outspoken proponent of open humanities, about which I have written some articles.
Most recently, I have written on the sociological reception of poetry (using the example of Tomas Tranströmer), as well as on literary authorship as an actor in civil society (explored through the case of Colson Whitehead). Together, these projects form the foundation of a research trajectory that aims to systematically relate social theory to articulations in cultural forms. My objective is to establish new links between social theory, normative critique, and cultural practice. Find my CV here for an arranged overview of my background.
Literature and Academic Work in Conversation
I also write literary fiction and poetry myself. I have recently assembled a new collection of poetry (in German), entitled Hader. You can find an excerpt of this here:
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You can find an overview of my scholarly work as well as a small selection of my literary work on this website. The scholarly work is mostly in English, the novel and poems are in German. You can find the privacy policy here.