New Chair of Early German Philology: Cordula Kropik

After studying German and German literature, phonetics, and political science, Cordula Kropik received her doctorate for a thesis on Middle High German heroic epics at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Her habilitation was awarded within the framework of a German Research Foundation, DFG funded project on the poetology of the courtly novel. In 2015 Cordula Kropik was accepted into the DFG's Heisenberg Programme, which enabled her to spend research periods in Jena, Basel, and Leipzig. In September 2019 she took up the assistant professorship for German Medieval Studies & General Literature at the University of Basel.

As Professor of Older German Philology, Cordula Kropik teaches and researches the literature, language, art, and culture of the German Middle Ages and the early modern period (ca. 800 to ca. 1600). She is particularly interested in combining philological and cultural studies approaches, developing new interdisciplinary perspectives, and strengthening methodological and conceptual reflection. Current research projects are devoted, among other things, to song in the context of the social culture of the 15th and 16th centuries, medieval procedures of poetological concept formation, and the connections between medieval reception and aesthetic memory.

Prof. Dr. Cordula Kropik appreciates the University of Bayreuth as a place where cosmopolitanism and a rich cultural past go hand in hand. "The international orientation of the University promotes encounters that build bridges between cultures and sharpen the awareness of the historical-cultural conditioning of each individual's point of view: This is not least a good prerequisite for a preoccupation with the cultures of the Middle Ages," she said.