Maria Roca Lizarazu

Dr. Maria Roca Lizarazu serves as Assistant Professor in German Literature, Culture and History of the 'long' 20th century at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, affiliated with Girton College. Her research centers on minority perspectives in contemporary German-language cultural production with emphasis on Jewish, Turkish, and Black German experiences.

She completed her PhD in German Studies at the University of Warwick in 2017, focusing on third-generation Holocaust memory representations. Subsequent postdoctoral appointments included fellowships at Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study and London's Institute for Languages, Cultures and Societies.

Roca Lizarazu's scholarship investigates cultural responses to migration, transnationalism, citizenship, and racialized violence through the lens of temporality. Her work explores how creative experimentation generates critical methodologies for memory-making and future-oriented world-building, particularly regarding violent historical legacies. Key frameworks include postmemory theory, affect studies, and literary futurism.

Recent publications (2020-2024) reveal consistent engagement with minority narratives across German literature, demonstrating interdisciplinary connections between memory studies and futures research. Her analyses of fabulation in Black German fiction, labor migration archives, and affective politics in Jewish cultural production highlight literature's capacity to construct alternative temporalities amid traumatic histories.

Major recognitions include:

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2018-2021) supporting research on postmigrant world-making
• Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study
• Postdoctoral Fellowship at London's Institute for Languages, Cultures and Societies

She supervises graduate students while teaching undergraduate courses including Modernising the Theatre (Ge5), Heimat und Alptraum (Ge6), Transforming the Stage (Ge12), and Futures and Utopianism (Ge13). Her Leverhulme-funded project examined literary future-making by postmigrant authors, and she collaborates on interdisciplinary initiatives exploring creative methodologies for social justice.

Roca Lizarazu maintains active partnerships with cultural practitioners through projects like Creative Futures at Galway's Moore Institute, emphasizing practice-based research that bridges academic analysis with artistic experimentation to address contemporary societal challenges.