• Early modern drama and theatrical culture 
• Shakespeare, memory and space  
• Cognition, affect and sense perception in early modern drama 
• Eighteenth-century culture and the literary history of globalization 
• Gender studies and feminist criticism 
• Robinson Crusoe and its afterlives 

I have been Professor for Early Modern Literature in English at the University of Zurich since 2019. My research and teaching revolve around early modern drama and theatrical culture, the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century and the literary history of globalization, gender studies and the history of feminism before 1800, and the afterlives of literary classics in modern adaptations and productions. I am particularly interested in the ways literary texts are part of the world: situated in specific historical, political and socio-cultural contexts; shaped by material conditions as well as cognitive, affective and aesthetic perception habits; taking form in theatrical performances, adaptations, re-writings; and working as acts of communication that create communities, shape identities, negotiate conflicts and allow us to understand better the world we live in. 

I am general editor of the Shakespeare Jahrbuch and a long-standing member of several international research associations including the Swiss Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft, the Shakespeare Association of America and the International Shakespeare Association. Before coming to Zurich, I was Professor for English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Würzburg, Germany, where I also served as Head of Department (2014–2016) and as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2017–2019). Since 2016 I have held research fellowships and visiting professorships at Jawaharlal-Nehru-University and Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. 

My current research project DramaSCAPES (funded by the SNSF, 2024-2028) explores the spaces of Shakespearen drama and asks how embodied subjects – in the playworld and the playhouse – experienced material environments cognitively, affectively and through their sense perceptions. It is, in very simple words, is about knowing and feeling in early modern plays as well as in the theatre. Two recent publications built the conceptual basis for it: Memory and Affect in Shakespeare’s England (co-edited with Jonathan Baldo for Cambridge University Press, 2023) and the essay collection Shakespeare/Space for the Arden Shakespeare Intersections Series (2024). The project also involves a collaboration with my colleague Annette Kern-Stähler at the University of Bern, with whom I am organizing an international conference on “The Sensorial Lives of the Nonhuman in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature” for September 2025. 

Another ongoing research and teaching project is the collaboration with the Robinson-Library, a unique archive of about 4’000 historical editions, translations and adaptations of Defoe’s famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). One of the most formative texts for modernity, it continues to influence our ideas about the colonial past as well as today’s globalization. The brand-new website was launched in 2024 – enjoy exploring it! 

• List of Publications  
• Early Modern Team Webpage  
• DramaSCAPES  
• The Feminist Enlightenment Across Europe 
• The Robinson-Library