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

 

 

Chair

PhD Students

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

Lehmann, Marina. AI generated texts for individualised reading learning

Nemes, Gáspár. Empirical study on the therapeutic function of narratives

Yang, Mingqiang. The term ‚Bildung‘ in literature and philosophy around 1800 (Chinese Scholarship Council)

Current Courses

Seminar: The Publics of Books

(Tuesday, 8.30 am – 10.00 am, P 208)

Lecture: Books Make Culture. On the Sociology of Books

(Tuesday, 12 pm – 2 pm, HS 13)

Lab Weekly: Trends in Computational and Experimental Humanities

(Tuesday, 4 pm – 6 pm, 543)

XXIX. Mainzer Kolloquium

(Friday, April 26th, 2024, 10 am – 4 pm, Atrium maximum)