Curriculum vitae

I was born in Berlin.
From 1978 to 1984 I studied German Philology, History of Art and Philosophy at the University of Cologne.
In 1990 I received my Ph.D. in German Philology from the University of Cologne with a study of the fairy tales written by
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and Alfred Döblin (published in 1991).

I earned my habilitation (advanced post-doctoral research qualification) in 2001 at the University of Tübingen with a study of Canon Formation and Literary Evaluation within the Realm of Children's Literature (published in 2003).

I received the academic title "außerplanmäßiger Professor" at the University of Tübingen in 2006.

I was visiting researcher at the Warburg Institute, London, and at the University of Lund, Sweden, and served as interim chair at the universities of Tübingen (2003), Mainz (2005), Cologne (2007-2009) and Siegen (2009-2010).

In spring/summer 2010 I held the position of guest professor in memory of Astrid Lindgren at Linnaeus University Kalmar/Växjö, Sweden, and in winter 2010/2011 I was guest professor at the University of Vienna, Austria.

From 2011-2012 I have been chair of the ESF-project "Children’s Literature and European Avant-Garde", funded by the European Science Foundation.

From 2012-2015 I have been scientific advisor of the German bookstart project "Lesestart. Drei Meilensteine für das Lesen", organized by "Stiftung Lesen" and funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

In 2014 I have been offered a chair for German Literature and Didactics at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy (offer declined).

Since 2015 I am member of the Management Committee and Editorial Manager of the COST-action "The digital literacy and multimodal practices of young children", funded by the EU.

I have lectured widely at international conferences and was invited to be the keynote speaker at several European and Non-European universities, including:

• University of Reykjavik,
• University of Stockholm,
• Oslomet University. Oslo,
• University of Copenhagen,
• University of Barcelona,
• Koc University, Istanbul,
• University of Antwerp,
• University of Zadar, Croatia
• University of Crete, Agios Nikolaios, Crete
• University of Lvov, Ukraine,
• Sorbonne, Paris,
• Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv
• University of Stellenbosch, South Africa,
• University of Winnipeg, Canada,
• University of Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
• University of Sao Paulo, Brazil,
• National Diet Library, Tokyo,
• University of Osaka.

I was also invited as one of the keynote speakers of the European Campus of Excellence "World Literature. Reading and Writing in the Age of Globalisation", University of Göttingen, February 2014.

I served on the jury of "The Special Prize for the Complete Works of a Translator in the Field of Children's Literature" (Sonderpreis für das Gesamtwerk eines/einer kinderliterarischen Übersetzers/Übersetzerin), which was part of the "German Youth Literature Award" (Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis) in 1999, and was chair of the same jury in the years 2001 and 2002. I was also an advisory editor of the four-volume "The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature" (2006, editor-in-chief: Jack Zipes).

I organized exhibitions on Jewish children's literature (Aktives Museum Spiegelgasse, Wiesbaden, 2005)
and on international baby books (Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem, Troisdorf, 2009).

I(co)organized fifteen international conferences on picturebook research (Barcelona, 2007), Astrid Lindgren (Växjö, 2008), picturebooks for young children (Troisdorf, 2009), manga/comics research (Cologne 2010), history and theory of the picturebook (Tübingen 2011), the Austrian-Jewish author Anna Maria Jokl (Vienna 2011), on literacy under the focus of language and cognitive development (Bielefeld, 2012), on children’s literature and European Avant-Garde (Norrköping, 2012), on European children's films (Erfurt, 2014), on canon constitution and canon change in children's literature (Tübingen, 2014), maps in children's literature (Bergen, 2015), children's films produced by the DEFA studios (2019), the illustrations of the fairytales by the Brothers Grimm in the twentieth century (2019), the political changes and transformations in twentieth and twenty-first century children's literature (2021), and the Isotype picturebooks by Marie Neurath (2022).