Professor Rebecca Braun

Professor of Modern Languages and Creative Futures

Current Teaching

GERM233 - Post-War German-Language Culture and Identities (convenor)

DELC339 - Translation as a Cultural Practice (convenor)

DELC401 - Research Skills for Modern Linguists

Research Overview

I research different forms of creative practice around the world and apply them both to practical policy making and to contemporary cultural critique. This is a licence to care deeply about the multiple contexts we inhabit, from those of our imagination through to the very real circumstances in which we live, think, and act. Since 2014, I have co-designed and delivered research projects with a range of international government agencies and creative partners, while my most recent books (two new titles in 2020) have pioneered a multi-vocal, practical angle on concepts of world literature, culture and authorship.

Research Interests

Literary authorship, world literature, transnationalism, translation

I am Co-Director of Lancaster University's Institute for Social Futures, where I lead on Creative Futures. This entails working across campus to design projects that fuse expertise from the Arts and Humanities with Science and Technology. See http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/social-futures

I am also Director of Research in the Department of Languages & Cultures, which entails managing a broad portfolio of diverse research projects. See http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/european-languages/research/

Additional Information

Research Grants Awarded

2020: Contract research for DSTL, scoping how to use creative futures methods for inclusive strategic planning, '#SharedStories: Giving Defence and Society a Way to See Shared Futures'

2014-2016: AHRC Early Career Fellowship to fund the project and associated interdisciplinary research hub, 'The Author and the World: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Authorship'.

2011-2014: Lancaster Early Career Grant, to support a series of research trips to literary and media archives in Germany to develop work on my second monograph and associated peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes.

2007-2009: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, held at the University of Liverpool, to begin work on my second monograph, provisionally entitled Writing Life: The Making of the Author in Germany's Media Age.

2002-2005: University of Oxford Scatcherd Scholarship to provide fees and living expenses for my doctorate, since published with Oxford University Press as Constructing Authorship in the Work of Günter Grass.

2001-2002: Alexander von Humboldt scholarship, extraordinarily granted by the University of Oxford Theodor Heuss selection committee, to allow me to begin work on my doctorate, attached to the Freie Universität, Berlin.

Editorial and Peer-Reviewer Roles

Editor: German Life & Letters

International Editorial Board: Gegenwartsliteratur

Book proposals peer-review: De Gruyter, Cambridge Scholars Press

Article peer-review: Austrian Studies, Celebrity Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Comparative Critical Studies, Edinburgh German Yearbook, Focus on German Studies, German Quarterly, History of Political Thought, Journal of Cultural Analytics, The Modern Language Review, Phrasis, Seminar

Book reviews: Journal of European Studies, Forum for Modern Language Studies, German Quarterly, The Modern Language Review, Times Higher Education Supplement

Membership of Associations

Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland

British Comparative Literature Association

Women in German Studies (UK and Ireland)

Modern Languages Association of America

German Studies Association of America

PhD Supervision Interests

I welcome proposals in all areas of creative futures: how creative practice can help us think differently about the future, and how engaging with futures can help us think differently about creative practice. Projects in this area are likely to have both a practical / policy and a theoretical application. I can also supervise projects specifically on 20th and 21st century German literature and culture as well as comparative projects that deal with issues of authorship, celebrity, world literature and the global literary industry, the relationship between the media and the culture industry, and questions surrounding the transmission and reception of culture in the contemporary world.

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Selected Publications Show all 36 publications

World Authorship
Boes, T., Braun, R., Spiers, E. 10/09/2020 Oxford : Oxford University Press. 400 p. ISBN: 9780198819653.
Book

Three Creative Futures Methods for Imagining Life in a Post-Antibiotic World: Report on a Speculative Cross-Sector and Cross-Campus Conversation
Braun, R., Curry, A., Gatherer, D., Kyne, K., Spiers, E. 26/04/2020 Lancaster : Institute for Social Futures, Lancaster University, 15 p.
Working paper

Pacing out a Polyglot Poetics: An Interview with Ulrike Draesner at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Braun, R.J. 3/01/2018 In: German Life and Letters. 71, 1, p. 111-129. 19 p.
Journal article

Doing German Differently: New Research Practices and Partnerships around the UK
Braun, R.J., Schofield, B. 07/2018 In: German Life and Letters. 71, 3, p. 374-394. 21 p.
Journal article

Literary Celebrity
Braun, R.J., Spiers, E. 1/10/2016 In: Celebrity Studies. 7, 4, 146 p.
Special issue

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