Dr Rita Singer Dr. phil. (Leipzig), Magistra Artium (Leipzig)

I obtained my PhD from the Institut für Anglistik at Universität Leipzig, specialising in Cultural Studies of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. In my thesis ‘Re-inventing the Gwerin: Anglo-Welsh Identities in Fiction and Non-Fiction, 1847-1914’, I investigated how the writers’ self-positioning in various social spaces intersects with their choice of language, their geographical locations and the impact this has on their representation of Welsh identities in English writing.

More recently, my research focused on travel writing from continental Europe about Wales since the mid-eighteenth century and the impact of German submarine warfare on Welsh communities during the First World War.

I am an experienced researcher and project officer with a particular interest in ideas of space and place in fictional and non-fictional writing in Wales, heritage tourism, maritime history and cultural geography.

During my time at Leipzig University, I taught several seminars at undergraduate and post-graduate levels in English Literature and Cultural Studies, focusing on Welsh writing in English, contemporary film and Orientalism. I also taught several introductory seminars to the study of literature and British history and culture.