معرفی
Angelika Zirker is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Tübingen, where she also serves as Co-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Her academic career is deeply embedded in the Department of English within the Faculty of Humanities, where she leads significant research initiatives and contributes to major editorial projects including Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate and Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch.
Zirker completed her studies in English, French, and German at the Universities of Saarbrücken (Germany), Metz (France), and Cardiff (Wales). She earned her PhD in English Literature in July 2009 with a dissertation on The Pilgrim as a Child: Concepts of Play, Language and Salvation in Lewis Carroll's Alice Books, followed by her Habilitation William Shakespeare and John Donne: Stages of the Soul in Early Modern English Poetry published by Manchester University Press in 2019.
Her research spans multiple interconnected fields with a strong focus on Shakespeare studies, Early Modern poetry, children's literature, and concepts of childhood. She has developed significant expertise in literature and religion, the theory of literary annotation, and nineteenth-century literature with emphasis on the novel. Zirker is particularly noted for her innovative work at the intersection of traditional literary scholarship and digital humanities methodologies, exploring how digital tools can enhance textual analysis and annotation practices.
Analysis of her recent publications reveals a consistent trajectory toward interdisciplinary collaboration and methodological innovation. Her work increasingly bridges literary studies with computational approaches, particularly in the areas of ambiguity studies, co-creativity in pre-modern literature, and systematic annotation of literary texts. This reflects her leadership in the Tübingen CRC "Andere Ästhetik" (Different Aesthetics) where she serves as principal investigator for project C5 on "The Aesthetics of Co-Creativity in Early Modern English Literature," and in CRC 1718 "Common Ground" where she co-chairs project C5 on "Multiple Common Grounds: Literary Mechanisms for Literary Meaning."
Zirker actively supervises Bachelor's and Master's theses on topics including literature from 1550-1900, digital literary studies, children's literature, poetry (medieval to present day), and literature and linguistics. Her grant portfolio demonstrates sustained success in securing major research funding, including her involvement in the successful CRC 1718 "Common Ground" proposal, her role as PI in the Tübingen CRC "Andere Ästhetik," and previous participation in GRK 1808 on Ambiguity: Production and Perception (2013-2022) and SFB 833's project A2 "Interpretability in Context" (2010-2022).
She leads the digital humanities project on explanatory annotation of literary texts (annotation.es.uni-tuebingen.de) and plays a central role in the Tübingen research ecosystem through her leadership in multiple collaborative research centers focused on textual analysis, ambiguity, and co-creativity in literary production. Her work demonstrates how traditional literary scholarship can be enriched through digital methodologies while maintaining rigorous philological standards.
