Karen Leeder

Professor Karen Leeder holds the Schwarz-Taylor Chair of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, affiliated with The Queen's College. Her research traces from East German underground art scenes to contemporary German poetry's intersections with science, translation, and memory. She leads the 'AfterWords' project exploring postmodernity's literary inheritance and will assume an International Visiting Professorship in Beijing (2025). As a prize-winning translator, she bridges German and English literary cultures, notably for Durs Grünbein, Ulrike Almut Sandig, and Evelyn Schlag. Her editorial roles include co-founding the 'Companions to Contemporary German Culture' series and serving on journal boards like German Monitor.

Her academic career includes grants from the British Academy, AHRC, and Einstein Visiting Fellowship (2023). Awards span translation prizes (English PEN, Schlegel-Tieck) and creative residencies. She curates public engagement initiatives like #OxfordReadsKafka and the Mediating Modern Poetry platform. Supervised doctoral topics encompass GDR literature, women's writing, and Berlin Republic cultural studies.

Research interests span: GDR cultural production, post-1945 German poetry, translation as creative practice, ecocritical theory, late style aesthetics, and transnational literary networks. Recent work interrogates ecological poetics, digital humanities, and post-humanist frameworks in contemporary German expression.