Pia Wiegmink

Professor Pia Wiegmink serves as a BCDSS Professor and Co-speaker at the University of Bonn, where she leads research in Dependency and Slavery Studies. She holds office in Room 2.019 at Niebuhrstr. 5, D-53113 Bonn, with regular office hours on Thursdays from 4–6 pm. Her academic leadership extends to co-organizing working groups including Life Writing, Slavery and Dependency and Rethinking Atlantic Narratives of Slavery and Freedom. In 2024, she was awarded a significant Australian Research Council Discovery Grant worth 882,000 AUSD for her collaborative project Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific.

Professor Wiegmink's research focuses on cultural practices and narratives of American slavery and dependency with global entanglements. Her 2022 monograph Abolitionist Cosmopolitanism redefined the potential of nineteenth century American abolitionist literature as a cultural and political imaginary. Current research includes The Protocols of Dependency in American Literature and German Immigrants, Life Writing, and the Afterlives of Slavery in Queensland. Her recent co-edited special issue (In)Dependent Selves: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Life Writing, Slavery and Dependency was published in Life Writing (2025).

Her publication record demonstrates a clear scholarly trajectory focusing on transnational perspectives of slavery, abolitionism, and dependency. Recent articles analyze Frederick Douglass's narratives, transatlantic slavery connections in Pacific contexts, and the cultural memory of German colonialism. Her work consistently bridges literary analysis with historical research, examining how narratives shape understandings of freedom and unfreedom across cultural boundaries.

Scientific Awards:

• Rob Kroes Award for the best unpublished manuscript in American studies by a European scholar (2021)
• Best Article Award 2019 Amerikastudien/American Studies

Professor Wiegmink has secured significant third-party funding, including an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (2025–2028), Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowships, and DFG research network support. She has taught courses including Pacific Plantations in the Age of Empire and Abolition and Transatlantic Slavery in 10 Objects at the University of Bonn. Her collaborative work with international scholars across Germany, Australia, and the United States demonstrates her commitment to transnational academic cooperation in addressing the legacies of slavery and dependency.