Sibylle Baumbach elected to the Academy of Sciences and Literature

"Being elected to this prestigious academy is a great honor for me," says Prof. Sibylle Baumbach, Professor of English Literatures and Cultures at the Institute of Literary Studies (ILW) at the University of Stuttgart. "I am very grateful for this honor and look forward to collaborating with the members of the academy.

Which political and social issues that concern us today were already on people’s minds in Shakespeare’s time? How have narratives changed in the digital age? When and why do we dive deeply into a text? How can literature capture attention, and how do literary creators respond to changing reading habits? Sibylle Baumbach, who is the head of the "Department of English Literatures and Cultures" at the ILW, explores these and other questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. "It is precisely the active exchange among scholars from different disciplines that sets the academy apart, and I very much look forward to it and to the new perspectives it will generate." says Baumbach. Her project "LitAttention", funded by the European Research Council (ERC), investigates "literary attention" with a special focus on short prose, also relies on interdisciplinary approaches, combining methods from literary studies with those from cognitive science, educational science, and computational linguistics.

Since 2018, Sibylle Baumbach has served as Professor of English Literatures and Cultures at the Institute of Literary Studies (ILW) at the University of Stuttgart, where she also is the head of the department of the same name. Prior to this, she taught English Literatures and Cultures at the Universities of Innsbruck, Giessen, and Mainz, and was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Stanford University. From 2013 to 2014, she served as spokesperson for the Young Academy of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the Leopoldina. Baumbach has been President of the German Shakespeare Society since 2023. She was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2024 for her project "LitAttention."

The Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz is a non-university research institution and scholarly society. As one of the eight scientific academies in Germany that are part of the Union of Academies, its aim is both to promote the sciences and literature and to preserve and foster culture. The academy in Mainz currently oversees 36 research projects across all disciplines, with a focus on long-term basic research. It is also committed to supporting early-career researchers, digitalizing research data and results, and promoting international collaborations.

Further news articles about Prof. Baumbach and her research:

Press release "What short stories know about attention"

News “New at the University of Stuttgart”