Women in German Studies

How can aspects of German history that might seem quite remote to today’s students be made accessible? When Dr Ellen Pilsworth, winner of the Women in German Studies postgraduate essay prize in 2015 and now Teaching Associate at the University of Bristol, was considering how to engage students creatively with the 1968 protest movement in … Continue reading →

The prize-winning essay of Melissa Schuh (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), who won the 2016 Women in German Studies Postgraduate Essay Prize competition, has now been published in the July 2018 issue of German Life and Letters: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/glal.12195 Many congratulations again to Melissa! Want to follow in Melissa’s footsteps (and those of our 2014 and 2015 winners and runners-up too)? The 2018 WIGS Postgraduate … Continue reading →

The WIGS Committee met at Aston on Saturday to plan the next members’ conference, which will take place at Aston on 9-10 November 2018. We’ll be posting details of the programme nearer the time, as well as further notices about the WIGS Postgraduate Essay Prize and WIGS Book Prize. WIGS committee members

There’s just a week left to get your abstracts in for the WIGS 30th Anniversary Conference. Don’t miss it! CALL FOR PAPERS        WIGS 30th Anniversary Conference Saturday 10 November 2018 Aston University The annual Women in German Studies members’ conference will be held at Aston University this November. Abstracts (c.150 words) are invited for … Continue reading →

When introducing my thesis topic – diabetes care and research in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – I am often met with some initially bemused-looking faces. Why diabetes? And why in the GDR? Having been interested from the beginning in the GDR, my primary objective was to use an unusual case study as a way … Continue reading →

CALL FOR PAPERS        WIGS 30th Anniversary Conference Saturday 10 November 2018 Aston University The annual Women in German Studies members’ conference will be held at Aston University this November. Abstracts (c.150 words) are invited for papers of about 20 minutes duration, on any topic within German Studies. There will be a workshop for postgraduates … Continue reading →

Heike Krüsemann recently submitted her thesis, in which she investigated whether the image of Germans in the UK press affects whether pupils want to study the language. Here she discusses the highlights of her work. As a German teacher in English secondary schools for many years, I became more and more aware of how difficult … Continue reading →

In WIGS’ 30th anniversary year, the WIGS committee are delighted to announce the calls for our 2018 WIGS Book Prize (for ECRs) and 2018 WIGS Postgraduate Essay Prize competitions. Please see below for further details. Please also note our earlier deadline for the WIGS Book Prize this year – 15 July 2018.   Women in German Studies Book Prize … Continue reading →

Earlier this year at the ‘Reform and Revolt’ Open WiGS Conference in Oxford, postgraduate delegates focused on making women visible on the digital map during the PG workshop. In a session convened by Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Oxford, Dr Martin Poulter, Wiggies learned how to upload content to Wikipedia and how to contribute … Continue reading →

Hi! I’m Mary Frank, the new postgrad rep at WIGS. My specialism is translation, and I’m working on a PhD at Bristol University that investigates the interplay between translation theory and translation practice. It’s a practice-led project that asks whether and how translation theory can help the practising translator and vice versa. The text I’m … Continue reading →

This time last week many WIGS members and non-members alike were in Oxford for our 2017 WIGS Open Conference on the theme of ‘Reform & Revolt’, where we enjoyed three days of engaging papers and conference activities. Once again, WIGS tweeted the conference using the hashtag #WIGS2017 and encouraged delegates to join in: the Storify … Continue reading →

In the first of a new series of blog entries on aspects of members’ career trajectories, Rose Simpson offers her thoughts on work-life balance: It took me a while to become a Woman in German Studies. I was temperamentally unsuited to life as a bank-manager’s wife and the Girls’ Grammar had failed to offer any other … Continue reading →