I work on the role of language in the life of communities, from political to business to literary. I have a decade of experience as executive of a research and consultancy firm, and have been teaching at leading universities in the UK and North America for more than twenty years. At the University of Bristol, my teaching is in German and Translation, and I serve as Director of the MA in Translation. I am the translator, author and editor of nearly thirty books on a wide range of issues; I engage regularly with diverse audiences as an event speaker and panelist and as a contributor to print and online media in both Britain and Germany. My doctorate is in German literature, from Oxford University. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

I belong to the handful of UK-based translators who have won prizes for translations in both directions within the same language pair, including the Zuger Anerkennungspreis for my German translation of Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate and the Dryden Competition for English translations of sonnets by Matthias Politycki. I was twice the recipient of grants by the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds, for translations of works by Garielle Lutz and James Dickey. I have also translated books by Guardian columnist Owen Jones, Atlas of Prejudice internet sensation Yanko Tsvetkov, science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams as well as multiple children’s books into German and a collection of essays by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa ino English. In my MARC041 campaign, I am advocating for greater visibility of translators in library catalogues and search engines. My Human vs Machine live translation slams draw crowds to events between e-sports and creativity.

My teaching focus is on the language of German politics and business and on training future translators. I have designed courses on centrism, business communication trends, German economic policy narratives and even German humour. In response to broader globaler and more specific language industry trends and with the help of dedicated colleagues, I have reoriented the MA Translation to embrace a wider definition of translation which involves authorship, research and consultancy work. At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, my aim is to help students understand how they can participate in the social, economic and political processes they analyse. This ambition is grounded in Resonance Pedagogy, of which I am an exponent. As an Associate of the Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching, I am aiming to get colleagues to engage with this approach. I am a University of Bristol Enterprise Champion and was a University Enterprise Fellow; I have served on the University’s Senate and as Academic Lead of Bristol Translates Literary Translation Summer school. Before coming to Bristol, I was first a post-doc and then director of the German language programme at Duke University.

With a passion, I support the education of highly motivated and gifted teenagers. Since 2014, I have been teaching for Deutsche Schülerakademie, the German government’s summer school scheme for exceptionally talented sixth-formers, where I help deliver a 16-day intensive course each year. I am also Vice Chair of the Potential Trust and a former Governor of a Roman Catholic primary school.

From 2010 to 2018, I was a Founding Partner of Nimirum, a research and consultancy firm analysing socio-economic change and consumer biographies. I was responsible for around 300 completed projects, enabling over 100 clients in retail and comminication to sharpen their profile, win a record number of bids, base strategic decisions on a secure footing and increase revenue. As Head of Research, I recruited, briefed and deployed researchers in 65 countries and looked after Nimirum’s research methods portfolio.

As a researcher, I started off by analysing how the poet Stefan George created a community of like-minded individuals; my book on George was second (only to Steven Pinker) on the NDR/SZ best new non-fiction list. Thus encouraged, I led multi-disciplinary research group at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study which further explored the interplay of creativity in language and communities and published its results in 2017. In parallel, I examined how personal encounters can be documented, editing the conversations between bestselling author Ernst Jünger and ‘interview artist’ André Müller, as part of a Marie Curie Fellowship project here at Bristol (2012–2014). I also edited the correspondence between scholar-poets Friedrich Gundolf and Friedrich Wolters. At the Technical University Braunschweig, I took part in a series of conferences on links between literature and travel.

As a creative writer, I am the author of two volumes of poetry and two travel books, the most recent one outlining 111 reasons to love England, which was widely featured in broadsheets, tabloids and on radio. I was awarded the Hermann-Hesse-Förderpreis and the Merkur Essaypreis and, in 2011, served as the Craig-Kade Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University. Focusing on poetry and community, I wrote a monthly column for the website of Das Gedicht, a literary journal. Over the years, I have worked with several periodicals, including Krachkultur, one of Germany’s leading literary magazines (as an adviser, since 2012), and as Assistant Editor of the German Quarterly (2006–2009).

I was part of the organising team of conferences and event series on intercultural encounters (University of Bristol, 2014), German reunification (Duke University, 2009, and Universität Freiburg, 2000), Translatability (Duke University, 2009) and the role of human rights in foreign policy (Deutscher Bundestag, 2000).