Akademische Mitarbeiterin Dr. Susann Liebich

Susann Liebich is an assistant professor in Modern History at the History Programme of Heidelberg University. After studying History, Media and Communication Studies (with a focus on Book History) and Psychology in Leipzig and Wellington, New Zealand, she received her doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington/Te Herenga Waka in 2012. Postdoctoral research positions followed at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia, in comparative literary studies, and at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. At the History Programme, she teaches courses on imperial and colonial history, maritime history, cultural history topics (also from an interdisciplinary perspective), and on academic writing.

Her research focuses on global histories of migration and mobility, media and communication history, maritime and environmental history, and the history of knowledge of the "long" 19th century, mostly with a regional focus on Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific region. Her dissertation was a cultural and social history of reading in the British Empire with a focus on New Zealand, c.1890-1930. A subsequent collaborative project examined geographical representations and imaginaries, especially in relation to the Asia-Pacific region, in Australian magazines of the interwar period, and resulted in the monograph The Transported Imagination published by Cambria Press, New York, 2018. Currently, she is working on literary practices at sea in the long 19th century and questions to what extent reading and writing are shaped by the spaces of the ocean and the ship and how they form travel experiences. Another interest lies in popular forms of knowledge about maritime environments and resources, as well as the history of scientific university collections of the 19th century.