Irina Wutsdorff is a Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Münster, where she has been appointed since September 2020. She is actively involved in the Cluster of Excellence as Head of Project C3-25 'Between Religious Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation: The Amimeticism of Icons in 19th and 20th Century Russian Art and Literature'. Her research interests span Slavic literatures and cultures in comparative perspective, with special focus on Russian and Bohemian Studies from the 18th to 21st centuries. She explores concepts and poetics across romanticism, realism, modernism, avant-garde and post-modernism, with particular expertise in literary and cultural theory including Prague Structuralism, Cultural Semiotics, Dialogicity by Mikhail Bakhtin, post-structuralism, gender studies, and spatial theories. Her recent scholarly output demonstrates a consistent focus on Central and Eastern European literary theory, Russian and Czech literature, and the intersections between literature, philosophy, and other arts. Her work often examines the relationship between cultural tradition and innovation, with particular attention to semiotic approaches and transcultural perspectives. Scientific Recognition: Member of the Heisenberg Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG) since August 2019 Member of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council since 2022 Member of the German Slavists' Association since 2007 Member of the Society for Bohemistics since 2002 Professor Wutsdorff has supervised numerous doctoral students working on diverse topics including Russian legal narratives, Polish Romantic ideologies, Soviet film iconography, Czech psychiatric literature, and representations of female corpses as icons. Her teaching covers literary theory, introduction to literary studies, Slavic literary history, and specialized seminars on topics ranging from Galician literatures to Jewish literature of Bukovina. She is actively engaged in research projects examining cultural entanglement and disentanglement, with particular focus on the theory platform of mediality within the Cluster of Excellence at the University of Münster.
