Professor Seán Allan

Current Research Institution

University of St Andrews, School of Modern Languages, St Andrews (United Kingdom)

Current Position(s)

Professor of German and Head of School

Research Interests

Seán’s research falls into two main areas. The first of these revolves around the culture of the European Enlightenment and, in particular, the mediation of discourses of education and violence in the work of Heinrich von Kleist. His other research area encompasses the cinema of the GDR and seeks to situate East German film within a wider transnational tradition of filmmaking. His most recent book – Screening Art. Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema (2019) explores the role of the Künstlerfilm – films about art and artists – in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in post-war Germany.

Why I recommend Bonn

Bonn was the very first German city I visited after starting to learn German at school, and it seems fitting that, some 40 years later, I now work at the University of St Andrews in a Department of German that has had very close ties with the University of Bonn. The two-year Masters Programme in German and Comparative Literature – set up several years ago as a joint venture between St Andrews and Bonn – was a ground-breaking initiative that saw students from the UK and Germany spending a year studying in each other’s countries and developing a genuinely international perspective on their studies. Given our mutual interest in exploring questions of diversity and transnational approaches to scholarship, it is particularly pleasing to see that this inter-departmental relationship is set be extended into a much deeper programme of collaboration at a university level. In almost every respect our universities complement each other perfectly and I look forward to playing a role in promoting that collaboration in new and exciting ways.

Thinking of coming to Bonn? Our Bonn University Ambassador Prof. Dr. Seán Allan is happy to answer your questions about joining the University of Bonn as an international doctoral student or researcher.