New Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Appointed

Jul 04, 2012

Professor Jürgen Barkhoff has been appointed as new Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin’s Arts & Humanities Research Institute. He is a Professor of German and specialist in German Literature and Culture in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. As Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, he will lead its development as a unique resource to foster and support innovative interdisciplinary research in the Arts & Humanities and to connect academic research with public debate. 

Speaking about his new position, Professor Barkhoff said: “The Arts & Humanities are fundamental for understanding who we are and where we come from, and they also help us to shape our future. They analyse the self-representation of cultures and societies and enable us to understand processes of identity formation. In Trinity College the Arts & Humanities are at the centre of the University and have a proud and distinguished history of scholarship. The impressive results in the recent QS World University Subject Rankings have just again underlined our world-class standing in this field”.

“The Trinity Long Room Hub has enormous potential to enhance the excellence of our Arts & Humanities research, to open opportunities for wider cross-disciplinary research collaborations and to showcase the relevance of the Arts & Humanities for today’s societies. I am looking forward to working with our Schools and the other stakeholders to realise this potential and make the Trinity Long Room Hub a vibrant place for advanced research and debate and a beacon for the Arts & Humanities,” he said.

The Trinity Long Room Hub involves the Library and seven academic schools. These schools are the School of Drama, Film and Music, the School of English, the School of Histories and Humanities, the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, the School of Religions, Theology and Ecumenics, and the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy.      

Professor Barkhoff is an internationally renowned scholar with a strong focus on interdisciplinary research. His main research is in the fields of Medical Humanities (medicine, psychology and literature), Environmental Humanities (nature writing and eco-literature) and questions of identity and culture in Europe. He was appointed to a lectureship in German and European Studies in Trinity College in 1995 after a Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut) in Essen/Germany. He was Director of the Centre for European Studies (2002-2005) and Registrar of the College 2007-2011. Recent publications include: ed. (with Helmut Eberhardt): Networking across Borders and Frontiers. Demarcation and Connectedness in European Culture and Society (2009); ed. (with Valerie Heffernan) Schweiz schreiben. ZuKonstruktion und Dekonstruktion des Mythos Schweiz in der Gegenwartsliteratur [On the construction of Swiss national myths in literature] (2010); ed. (with Dietrich von Engelhardt) Körperkult - Körperzwang - Körperstörung im Spiegel von Psychopathologie, Literatur und Kultur [cult of the body – pathology of the body in psychopathology, literature and culture] (2010).