Since 2019, I have been working as a Research Associate in Theatre Studies at Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (HfMT Hamburg).
I hold a Master’s degree in History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford and a state certificate (MA equivalent) in German Studies and Theology from the University of Hamburg, with minors in Philosophy, Scandinavian Studies, and Educational Science. My studies were funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) – I also regularly serve as a voluntary selection committee member for Studienstiftung.
After graduating, I was a fellow of the international research training group “InterArt” at Freie Universität Berlin and a one-year visiting scholar at the Doctoral School of Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. I received a PhD scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to pursue a dissertation on staged intimacy in contemporary theatre and performance art.
Following this, I held a Global Humanities Junior Fellowship with the network “Principles of Cultural Dynamics” at Freie Universität Berlin and spent six months at the Research Institute for the Humanities, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Additional research stays took me to Stockholm, Reykjavík, and Tórshavn in the Faroes. I speak and read German, English, Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish.
Complementing my university work, I also teach courses in German and Religious Studies at the upper-secondary school level.
My research and teaching interests include intimacy and violence in the performing arts, immersive theatre and one-to-one performance, modern Nordic art and literature, and human-animal studies, with a particular focus on cultural entomology and parasitism. Or, simply put: intimacy, immersion, and insects.
Contact: mail [at] katharinaalsen.com