Humanities

The Department of Anglophone Studies under Professor Jens Gurr plays a leading role in one of the University’s main research areas, Urban Systems. Under his supervision, funds were raised for the international and interdisciplinary doctoral programme “ARUS – Advanced Research in Urban Systems”, which has already started up with seven PhD students and will continue until 2013. On the invitation of the Ford Foundation, Professor Gurr addressed the topic of “Urbanity” in two workshops in Cleveland and Detroit. The workshops were conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the US under the title “LESSONS FROM EUROPE: Regional Governance and Economic Transformation in Older Industrial Regions”. Research at the Department is characterised by the close interplay between literature, language and culture, and by interdisciplinary collaboration. The areas of interest range from British culture and literature of the 17th and 18th centuries to modern popular culture and inter-American studies and include other core areas such as the history of English varieties and language use in changing sociohistorical contexts. In July 2009, Professor Josef Raab, a specialist in American Studies, was elected founding president of the International Association of Inter-American Studies. Professor Bernd Rüschoff was appointed to the “Professional Network Forum”, a think tank which advises the European Centre for Modern Languages (part of the Council of Europe) on the development of core project areas.