Language, literature, culture
Language, literature and culture represent the main focuses of research at the Faculty of Philology. There are no historical or regional limitations to the faculty’s broad disciplinary spectrum. The objects of research span all cultural epochs and continents.
Current research projects
History(s) in a "thick finding" - a multidisciplinary investigation of the Egyptian coffin with mummy in Münster
Professor Angelika Lohwasser | 2026 – 2028 (1st funding period) | DFGVariation in English on the Internet and its implications II: An empirical study of web registers in the Anglophone Caribbean
Professor Dagmar Deuber | 2026 – 2029 (2nd funding period) | DFGUnknown Encomia on the Coptic Saint Shenute of Atripe (4th/5th Century): Critical Edition, Translation, and Studies of a Newly Discovered Arabic Manuscript
Dr Samuel Moawad | 2026 – 2028 (1st funding period) | DFGEdition of Ibn Nubātah al-Miṣrī's (1287-1366) Complete Works
Professor Thomas Bauer, Professor Syrinx von Hees | 2026 – 2028 (3rd funding period) | DFG (long-term project)Encyclopedia of Arabic Stylistic Devices (EASD)
Professor Syrinx von Hees | 2026 – 2030 (1st funding period) | DFGMultilingualism in (post-)industrial metropolitan regions
Professor Ulrike Freywald | 2026 | DAAD: German Studies Department partnershipsPPP Japan 2026 - Prosodic Cues and Pragmatic Effects
Professor Ulrike Freywald | 2026 | DAAD: Programme of project-related personnel exchange with various partner countriesUnderground Music: The Purpose and Meaning of Musical Images in Tombs from the Period of Division in China (220-589 CE)
Dr Annette Kieser, Dr. Noa Hegesh (Tel Aviv University) | 2025 – 2028 | DFGThe Libraries of Babylon
Professor Kristin Kleber, Dr Greta van Buylaere | 2025 – 2028 (1st funding period) | DFGPoetics of Modelling -- A Participatory Approach to Energy Transition
Professor Klaus Stierstorfer, Professor Veit Hagenmeyer (KIT) | 2025 – 2030 | DFG (Reinhart Koselleck Projects)Constellations between Literature and Law in the Spanish Enlightenment
Professor Christian von Tschilschke, Professor Ignacio Czeguhn (FU Berlin) | 2025 – 2028 (1st funding period) | DFGLinguistic practices of coal mining communities in the post-industrial era: variation, documentation, representation, regeneration (Coal)
Dr Nantke Pecht, Professor Evelyn Ziegler (U Duisburg-Essen) | 2025 – 2028 (1st funding period) | DFGBāḥra ḥassāb: Knowledge Transmission in Ethiopia and Eritrea from Antiquity to Modern Times
Dr Daria Elagina | 2025 – 2030 | DFG (Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Group)FOR 5663 - TP2: Books, Their Makers and Their Owners in New Settlements (15th–16th Century)
Prof. Katrin Kogman-Appel | 2025 – 2029 | Subproject in FOR 5663: Ashkenaz in New Environments: Actors, Practices and Spaces in Central European Jewish History during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Coordination: U Trier) | DFG (research unit)Democracy, Environmental Education, and Discursive Participation (DEEP)
Prof. Juliane Stude | 2025 – 2026 | DAAD: University Dialogue with the Islamic WorldThe Traces of the ‘Little Ice Age’ in Early Modern Literature (1570–1780)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Joana van de Löcht | 2024 – 2027 (1st funding period) | DFG (Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Group)Tundra Yukaghir Grammar and Documentation
Prof. Dr. Dejan Matic | 2024 – 2026 (2nd funding period) | DFGMigration, Diaspora, Citizenship (MDC)
Prof. Klaus Stierstorfer | 2024 – 2029 | EU Horizon Europe - MSCA COFUND Postdoctoral programmePedagogical Alliance for XR Technologies in (Teacher) Education (PAX)
Prof. Frauke Matz | 2024 – 2027 | EU Erasmus+ - InnovationsallianzenLaw and Justice in Yugo-Slavian Literatures
Dr Davor Beganovic | 2024 – 2027 | DFGSFB 1604 - B05: The Multilingual Hospital. The Production of Migration through Language as Communicative and Social Infrastructure
Prof. Christine Dimroth | 2024 – 2027 | Subproject in SFB 1604: Production of Migration (Coordination: U Osnabrück) | DFG (collaborative research centre)Migration Narratives in European Media: Teaching, Learning, and Reflecting (MigraMedia)
Prof. Silvia Schultermandl | 2023 – 2026 | EU project coordinated outside the University of Münster (Coordination: Stiftung Universität Hildesheim) | EU Erasmus+ - Cooperation PartnershipsFOR 5415 - TP 2: Late Roman administration and cultural interdependence in the Egyptian Dachla Oasis
Prof. Gesa Schenke | 2023 – 2027 | Subproject in FOR 5415: Xenocracy on site. Administration and Cultural Interdependence in the premodern era (Coordination: U Münster) | DFG (research unit)Youth meets China
Professor Kerstin Storm | 2023 – 2027 | Bildungsnetzwerk China gGmbHWadi Abu Dom Investigations – El Rum Oasis
Professor Angelika Lohwasser | 2023 – 2026 (2nd funding period) | DFGNorm-transgressive behaviour in the divine world of ancient Egypt
Professor (apl.) Alexandra von Lieven | 2023 – 2027 (2nd funding period) | DFGFOR 5317 - TP: Pronouns as a construction network: Usage-based analyses of procedures for personal reference in verbal-oral interaction
Dr. Jens Philipp Lanwer | 2023 – 2027 | Subproject in FOR 5317: Practices of personal reference: Personal, indefinite and demonstrative pronouns in use (Coordination: U Hamburg) | DFG (research unit)FOR 5317 - TP: Changing referential practice: The German pronoun 'man' from a diachronic perspective
Professor Antje Dammel | 2023 – 2026 | Subproject in FOR 5317: Practices for referring to persons: usage-based approaches to personal, indefinite and demonstrative pronouns (Coordination: U Hamburg) | DFG (research unit)FOR 5317 - TP: Practices of referring to persons: Uses of pronouns in oncological medical interactions
Professor Susanne Günthner, Professor Wolfgang Imo (U Hamburg) | 2023 – 2026 | Subproject in FOR 5317: Practices for referring to persons: usage-based approaches to personal, indefinite and demonstrative pronouns (Coordination: U Hamburg) | DFG (research unit)Adaptive language support architecture using the example of connectivity in climate and energy discourses - Subproject Secondary Level I (with subject-specific didactics focus) (ARCHE)
Professor Anne Berkemeier | 2022 – 2028 | Participation in a federally funded consortium | BMFTRInternationalisation of teacher training in German/German as a foreign language
Professor Stude | 2022 – 2026 (3rd funding period) | DAAD: International study and training partnershipsInner-Islamic Transmission of Knowledge in the Eastern Mediterranean: On Arabic-Ottoman Translations of Biographical Dictionaries between 1400 and 1750
Jun. Professor Bockholt | 2022 – 2028 | DFG (Emmy Noether Programme)Comprehensive Papyrology and Digital Study of Ancient Manuscripts
Professor Schenke, Professor Sänger | 2022 – 2028 | VolkswagenStiftung: Weltwissen – Structural strengthening of "small subjects"Governance in Babylon: Negotiating the Rule of Three Empires (GoviB)
Professor Kleber | 2021 – 2027 | EU H2020 - ERC Consolidator GrantLifeworlds of the early first millennium BC in the western Zagros Mountains on the Lower Zab before and after the Assyrian annexation: The civil centre of the Dinka Settlement Complex in the Peshdar Plain
Professor Kreppner | 2021 – 2026 | DFGVariation in English on the internet and its implications II: an empirical study of web registers in the Anglophone Caribbean
Professor Deuber | 2021 – 2026 (1st funding period) | DFGConfigurations of the aesthetic in (East) Central European modernism
Professor Wutsdorff | 2020 – 2027 | DFG (Heisenberg Professorship)Dialect atlas of Central West Germany
Professor Spiekermann | Academy project DMW (Coordination: University of Siegen) | 2016 – 2032 | Academy programme of the Union of the German National Academies of Sciences and Letters
Research institutes and centres
Research Council
The Research Council of the Faculty of Philology fosters interdisciplinary networking and exchange both within the faculty and beyond. It also provides guidance on grant applications and actively seeks to identify and initiate new research endeavours. The council makes recommendations regarding the allocation of seed funding for such projects (through the faculty’s Research Support Fund [de]) as well as for international conferences, symposia, and similar events (through the faculty’s Internationalisation Fund [de]). All researchers within the faculty are eligible to apply.
Research portal of the University of Münster
The University of Münster research portal provides you with an overview of the varied research activities carried out and results achieved at the University of Münster. Use keywords to search for researchers with their fields of expertise, their research projects and the resulting publications, the awards and distinctions received and the doctorates and habilitations supervised.