Professor Nicholas Saul, BA, MA, PhD

Nicholas Saul is Professor of German at Durham University and served as Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures from 2005-2008.

Nicholas graduated from the University of Cambridge BA (1976), MA (1979) and PhD in 1982.  He began his academic career as a Research Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, before joining Trinity College Dublin in 1982 as Lecturer in German.  There he was made Fellow in 1991 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1992.  He moved to the University of Liverpool in 1998 as Professor of German and was appointed to Durham in 2003.  Whilst at Liverpool he was Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research.  At Durham he was Chairman of the School Research Committee in 2003-2004 before becoming Head of School.

Nicholas's research ranges from the literature and culture of the eighteenth to that of the twentieth century.  His particular interests include the expression of German Darwinism in literature and the visual arts, German Orientalism (especially German-Romany relations), intertextuality and interdiscursivity, modern German literature (especially Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Wilhelm Jensen and Carl Hauptmann), and the representation of death in literature.  In 2007 he published a major monograph on the presence of Romanies in nineteenth-century German anthropology and literature, and his edition of the Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism appeared in 2009. Nicholas has held Guest Professorships at the University of Cologne (1998) and the University of Vermont (2004), was a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung from 1986-91, and has been a member of the Council of the English Goethe Society since 2003.  He recently served as the External Teaching Quality reviewer for the German Department at Birkbeck College, as External Reviewer for the Royal Holloway, University of London German RAE return, as External Periodic Reviewer for the Review of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Royal Holloway, and as External Assessor for the Quality Review of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv-Schiller National Museum at Marbach (one of the three largest German Studies archives in Germany).  He was also on the team for the recent review of Modern Languages at Trinity College Dublin.  He is a member of the Editorial Board of the scholarly journal Publications of the English Goethe Society, and also a member of the Präsidium (Council) and Editorial Board of the Internationale Novalis-Gesellschaft (International Novalis Society).  He is a member of Sub-Panel D28 (Modern Languages/German) of the Hefce REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2011-2014.

Apart from his Humboldt Fellowship, Nicholas has held numerous awards from the British Academy, including a Senior Research Fellowship in 2004 -2005, and also a joint Fellowship of the Royal Irish Academy and Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Nicholas joined Council as a staff member in March 2008 and is a member of the Retirement Benefits Plan Board of Trustees, the Pension Scheme Investments Sub Committee and the Administration Sub Committee.  He serves as a member of the Finance & General Purposes Committee, the Senate Ceremonies and Honorary Degrees Advisory Panel, as Council representative on the Council of University College, Durham, and has also been a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.