About

I study how books and reading evolve. Primarily with historical, experimental, and other assorted computational methods. Work at University of Mainz as Gutenberg Chair for book and reading studies, but views expressed here are my own, especially wrong ones.

  1. Phylogeny of stories: Our goal is to understand how story sharing evolved in early human history, how early storytelling is structured, and what are the consequences for human history from the long perspective.
  2. Ontogeny of stories: Our group uses experimental and computational methods to study how children and youth engage in story sharing.
  3. History of stories: We explore the book history since the 15th century as necessary to understand today’s diversity of books and reading.
  4. Digital presence of stories: We scrutinize today’s digital transformation of story sharing and try to inform decisions about the regulation of digital society.

Research

Phylogeny of Stories

Ontogeny of Stories

Ontogeny of Stories

 

History of Stories

 

History of Stories

History
of
Modernism

We work on a computational history of modern literature. We explore authors, the rise of new genres or national literatures, and search for pattern in the modernization of the arts… more

 

History of Stories

 

Digital Presence of Stories

 

 

Story sharing
in
the Digital Age

Based on real-time data of today’s readers, we analyse what stories people share. Specifically, we scrutinise the effects of reading on well-being … more

 

 

Lauer, G. (2026). Die Literatur des Widerstands. In K. Giblett, Y. Lü, & B. Stone (Eds.), Widerstandsfigurationen in deutschsprachigen Literaturen und Medien/Figurations of Resistance in German-language Literature and Media (pp. 197–210). Erich Schmidt. https://doi.org/10.37307/b.978-3-503-24196-5

Chair

PhD Students

Bakhturina, Polina. Modeling the Moral Impact of Literature with LLM-Based Agent Modeling

Beliavskyi, Mykhailo. Die Rezeption deutscher Medientexte in der russischsprachigen Fanfiction (Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft)

Gągała, Łukasz. Attributing authorship in low German manuscripts (Cusanuswerk)

Lehmann, Marina. Sociology of non-readers

Christine Weinberg. Parasoziales Erleben von Romance-Leserinnen

Current Courses

(Wednesday, 8.30 am – 10.00 am, P 208)

Seminar: Which Books Will We Read?

Lecture: Why Reading?

(Tuesday, 12 pm – 2 pm, P 5)

Lab Weekly: Trends in Computational and Experimental Humanities

(Tuesday, 4 pm – 6 pm, 543)

XXXI. Mainzer Kolloquium

(Friday, January 30, 2026, 10 am – 4 pm, Atrium maximum)