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Externally-Funded Research Projects

Externally Funded Research Projects

forschung ©daviesThe University of Freiburg’s English Department is recognized within Germany and abroad as a hub for research excellence. Many of our scholars of English language, literature and culture are spearheading projects at five of the university’s externally funded research centers:

  • DFG Project
    Young German Learner English: Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency
  • Reinhart Koselleck Project
    Diachronic Narratology
  • European Research Council Starting Grant
    Lists in Literature and Culture: Towards a Listology

DFG Project | Young German Learner English

Dr. Anna Rosen
Co-Project Director

[2023 – 2026]

The project Young German Learner English: Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency – funded by the German Research Foundation – is a joint venture among the universities of Bamberg (PD Dr. Valentin Werner), Hamburg (Prof. Robert Fuchs), and Freiburg (Dr. Anna Rosen).


This project will offer an analysis of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF), a triad that represents important constructs in the study of Second Language Acquisition. The overarching goal of this project is to analyse the interlanguage of EFL learners attending German schools based on empirical data. Therefore, we will compile and annotate a corpus of spoken and written production data from learners in early to intermediate stages (grades 5–12 in the German system). In addition, we will investigate CAF in this group, explore the interdependence of these variables and attempt to explain variation with regard to contextual and learner factors (e.g. motivation, socio-economic status). The quasi-longitudinal approach applied will serve to model the trajectory of EFL acquisition in the German context. We will take a usage-based perspective with a focus on the CAF triad and potential interactions between its individual components. The project will serve to overcome several of the longstanding restrictions of learner corpus research (such as a bias towards studying learners at advanced proficiency levels) and will contribute to a better understanding of processes of SLA more generally, and of the analysis of the CAF triad specifically. After project completion, the corpus will be made available for the research community and will be one of only a few internationally available learner corpora of school students.

You can find more information here

Reinhart Koselleck Project | Diachronic Narratology

Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
Antragstellerin

[2019 – 2024]

The project Diachronic Narratology intends to look at the development of English narrative from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century from the perspective of functional changes in narrative strategies and to do so by considering several narrative genres and their evolution. The intention is to compare between genres both synchronically and diachronically in order to determine which changes are genre-related and which changes occur in all genres at roughly the same period. In contrast to historical narratologies, focusing on narrative strategies within a particular period (medieval narratology, early modern narratology, etc.), the project wants to highlight the shifts in form and function between different periods and genres.

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

LISTLIT

listlit.jpegLists in Literature and Culture: Towards a Listology | ERC Starting Grant

[2017 – 2022]

LISTLIT investigates the cultural practice of lists and list making and its manifestations in narrative texts from antiquity until the twenty-first century. The simple form of the list has been remarkably constant for centuries: as a practical device, lists have been a prime instrument for classifying, organizing, and categorizing the world since the early high civilizations. Lists are tools of the mind: in visualizing human beings’ thinking, they are indicative of cognitive processes. In literary texts, list structures have been employed at least since antiquity. The manifold configurations of lists in literature and their enmeshment with the practical usage of lists in a given period take centre stage in this project. How are lists as a tool for thinking and organizing the world in everyday life and lists in literature intertwined? Embedded in narrative texts, lists challenge the received parameters of how narrative texts work. The study of lists in the trajectory of cognition, narration, and practical usage thus provides a risky and challenging alternative approach to narrative forms and functions, reader engagement, and the aesthetics of literature. Situated at the heart of the intersections between cognitive theory, cultural history, and literary history, LISTLIT significantly advances our understanding of how literature and list making as a cognitive tool and cultural practice are interrelated. By scrutinizing the practices of list writing in and beyond literary texts, LISTLIT establishes a ‘listology’, that is, the systematic and diachronic study of lists and listing structures in cultural productions.

  • Dr. Anne Rüggemeier
    Englische Literaturwissenschaft
    PostDoc | seit Oktober 2017
    "List-Making in Narratives of Illness and Disruption"

  • Dr. Roman Alexander Barton
    Englische Literaturwissenschaft
    PostDoc | seit Oktober 2018
    "Mimesis and Enumeration: List-Making between Figuralism and Experientiality in Early Modern British Literature"

  • Julia Böckling, M.A.
    Englische Sprache und Literatur
    Doktorandin | seit Mai 2018
    "Lists and Consumerism in Novels and Online"

  • Sarah Link, M.A.
    Englische Sprache und Literatur
    Doktorandin | seit April 2018
    "Lists in Police Work and Detective Fiction in Nineteenth-Century England – a Reception-Theoretical Analysis"

You can find more information at www.listlit.uni-freiburg.de

SFB 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms”

SFB 948SFB 948 | Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms: Transformations and Conjunctures from Antiquity to the Modern Day

[2012–2021]

The Collaborative Research Centre 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), studies the heroic as a social phenomenon from a transdisciplinary, trans-epochal and transcultural perspective. A main focus is on the social orders that are stabilized but also brought into question by heroic figures. The following is a list of SFB 948 researchers and projects associated with the English Department.

  • Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Vice-Speaker
    Head of the Integrated Research Training Group (IGK)

  • Dr. Ulrike Zimmermann
    Coordinator of the Integrated Research Training Group (IGK)

  • Project D15
    The Heroic in 21st-Century British Television Series: Discourses and Aesthetic Strategies of a Popular Medium 
    [2nd funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte & PD Dr. Nicole Falkenhayner
    Heads of Project
    Maria Xenia Hardt, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation: Heroism in Doctor Who

  • Project B4
    ‘New Washingtons?’ The Heroization of American Presidents from the Early Republic to Reconstruction
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Michael Butter
    Head of Project

  • Project C3
    Imagined Competition: ‘Exotic’ Heroes in English and German Heroic Drama of the Late 17th Century
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte & Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer (German Department)
    Heads of Project
    Dr. Christiane Hansen
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation: Theatrical Analyses of the Heroic in Restoration England

  • Project C4
    The Heroic in British Periodicals Between 1850 and 1900: Competing Semantics and Modes of Presentation
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Head of Project
    Christiane Hadamitzky
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation: Competing Semantics and Modes of Presentation: The Negotiation of the Heroic in Victorian Magazines Between 1850 and 1900

  • Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hochbruck
    Member | Firefighters and Hero Culture

  • Prof. Dr. Stefanie Lethbridge
    Member | Heroes and Hero Cultures in Britain: 18th and 19th Century, Contemporary Popular Culture, Superheroes

 

Find out more at www.sfb948.uni-freiburg.de/en.

SFB 1015 “Otium: Boundaries, Chronotopes, Practices”

SFB 1015SFB 1015 | Otium: Boundaries, Chronotopes, Practices

[2013–2020]

The Collaborative Research Centre 1015 “Otium”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), systematically analyzes cultures of otium from literary, historical, and sociological perspectives, with a strong focus on the social and sociopolitical aspects of the topic. The SFB 1015 researchers are refining contemporary debates on the allocation and use of free time in society by analyzing different social practices along with their histories, aesthetic interpretations and the discourses surrounding them. The following is a list of SFB 1015 researchers and projects associated with the English Department.

  • Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Member of the Executive Board

  • Project G4
    Leisure in Contemporary Indian Literature
    [2nd funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Head of Project
    Melina Munz, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation
    Farha Noor, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation

  • Project B3
    ‘Performing Idleness’: British Theatre in the Eighteenth Century as a Space of Leisure, Idleness and Otium
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Head of Project
    Dr. Kerstin Fest
    Mitarbeiterin

  • Project B4
    Leisured Travel vs. Tourism: Individualism and Deceleration in British Travel Writing Between 1840 and 1914
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Head of Project
    Dr. Heidi Liedke
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation: There Is No Joy But Calm: Idleness, Travel and Idle Travelling in the Victorian Age

  • Project C3
    Figures of Idleness in 18th-Century British Colonial Discourse: Nabob, Nawaab, and the ‘Lazy Native’
    [1st funding phase]
    PD Dr. Miriam Nandi
    Head of Project
    Pia Florence Masurczak, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | Dissertation

  • Working Group 2
    Semantics of Otium
    [1st funding phase]
    Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik & Prof. Dr. Thomas Klinkert (Department of Romance Studies)



Find out more at www.sfb1015.uni-freiburg.de/en.

GRK 1767 “Factual and Fictional Narration”

GRK 1767GRK 1767 | Factual and Fictional Narration

[2012–2021]

The Research Training Group 1767 “Factual and Fictional Narration”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), explores the multiple intersections which exist between different kinds of factual and fictional narratives, across a broad range of genres, text types and media. The goal of this interdisciplinary group, with researchers from fields within the humanities and beyond, is to develop a set of critical tools and approaches capable of pushing beyond narratology’s customary preoccupation with fictional rather than factual texts. The following is a list of GRK 1767 researchers and projects associated with the English Department.

  • Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Speaker
    Initiator

  • Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Initiator | 1st funding phase

  • Jr. Prof. Dr. Eva von Contzen
    Initiator | 2nd funding phase

  • PD Dr. Nicole Falkenhayner
    Postdoc | 1st funding phase

  • Dr. Dustin Breitenwischer
    Postdoc | 1st & 2nd funding phases

  • Dr. Johannes Franzen
    Ph.D. Student | 1st cohort
    Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Dissertation: Indiskrete Fiktionen: Theorie und Praxis des Schlüsselromans 1960–2015

  • Dr. Maximilian Alders
    Ph.D. Student | 1st cohort
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Dissertation: Mind-Telling: Social Minds in Fiction and History

  • Marc Wurich, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 1st cohort
    Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Dissertation: Die Großstadt erzählen: Urbane Wirklichkeitserfahrungen und ihre narrative Vermittlung in Berlinromanen zwischen 1880 und 1920

  • Sebastian Kleinschmidt, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 2nd cohort
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Dissertation: Memoria or Imaginatio? Narrating Salvation in Middle English Visions of the Afterlife

  • Verena Spohn
    Ph.D. Student | 2nd cohort
    Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Dissertation: Vom Du-Erzählen: Die Du-Anrede als narrative Strategie in volkssprachlichen religiösen Texten des späten Mittelalters

  • Annika Wirth, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 2nd cohort
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik
    Dissertation: Gulf War Captivity Discourses: Factual and Fictional Narration in POW Biographies and the Media Landscape, 1991–2011

 

Find out more at www.grk-erzaehlen.uni-freiburg.de.

GRK 1624 “Frequency Effects in Language”

GRK 1624GRK 1624 | Frequency Effects in Language

[2009–2018]

The Research Training Group 1624 “Frequency Effects in Language”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), carries out empirically rich and methodologically coordinated research on frequency effects with a focus on standard and non-standard varieties of European languages. Frequency, defined in terms of the number of occurrences of a given linguistic structure in a particular linguistic system or subsystem, is assumed to be a possible determinant in usage-based models of language change, language acquisition and language processing. The group’s research integrates descriptivist and cognitivist approaches and uses a broad empirical corpus base, opening up new, constructively critical approaches to usage-based modelling in linguistics. The following is a list of GRK 1624 researchers and projects associated with the English Department.

  • Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Speaker
    Initiator
    Research areas: Strukturelle Beschreibung des modernen Englisch, Sprachwandel in der Gegenwart

  • Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann
    Initiator
    Research areas: Sprachwandelforschung, Varietätenlinguistik, europäische Arealtypologie

  • Dr. Alice Blumenthal-Dramé
    Associate Faculty Member
    Research area: Neurolinguistics

  • Dr. David Lorenz
    Ph.D. Student | 1st generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann
    Dissertation: Contractions of English Semi-Modals: The Emancipating Effect of Frequency

  • Dr. Péter Rácz
    Ph.D. Student | 1st generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Dissertation: Salience in Sociolinguistics

  • Luminiţa Traşcă, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 1st generation
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Dissertation: Information Densification in Contemporary Romanian Written Styles: A Corpus-Based Study of Transfer, Frequency and Change

  • Dr. Stephanie Horch
    Ph.D. Student | 2nd generation
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Dissertation: Conversion in Asian Englishes: A Usage-Based Account of the Emergence of New Local Norms

  • Dr. Katja Schwemmer (née Roller)
    Ph.D. Student | 2nd generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Dissertation: On the Relation Between Frequency and Salience in Morphosyntax: The Case of Welsh English

  • Luke Bradley, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 3rd generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann & Dr. Alice Blumenthal-Dramé
    Dissertation: Frequency Effects on Word Recognition in Analytic and Synthetic Languages

  • Karolina Rudnicka, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 3rd generation
    Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair
    Dissertation: The Statistics of Obsolescence: Case Studies from Late Modern English Grammar

  • Laura Terassa, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 3rd generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann
    Dissertation: Morphological Simplification in Asian Englishes: Frequency, Substratum Transfer, and Institutionalization

  • Udo Rohe (né Baumann)
    Ph.D. Student | 4th generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann
    Dissertation: The Progressive in Present-Day Spoken English: A Case of Constructional Change?

  • Laura Cuthbertson, M.A.
    Ph.D. Student | 4th generation
    Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair & Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Bernd Kortmann
    Dissertation: Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (LCCM) Theory, Temporal Conceptualization and Corpus-Based Methods

 

Find out more at frequenz.uni-freiburg.de.

Research Group “New Media – New Ways to Travel”

Research Group | New Media – New Ways to Travel

[2018–2022]

The interdisciplinary research group “New Media – New Ways to Travel”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, is focused on the intertwining of current travel experiences – ranging from new forms of pilgrimage, to urban tourism, to dark tourism – with medialized forms of travel like books and blogs. Some of the questions that the research group is exploring are: How do people currently travel? What experiences do they have? What representations of travel can be found in the media? How do travel practices and media influence one another?

To further explore the symbiosis between travel and media, the research group has forged partnerships with external organizations including tourism and trade fair boards. Working with these partners allows the research group’s graduate students to gain professional and practical experience, paving the way for careers both within and outside of academia. The following is a list of New Media – New Ways to Travel researchers and projects associated with the English Department.

  • Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
    Speaker

 

Find out more at www.forschungskolleg-neuesreisen.uni-freiburg.de.