Thomas Boyken appointed

Professor Dr. Thomas Boyken has been appointed Professor of Children's and Youth Literature at the Institute for German Studies. He was previously a junior professor at the university. Since 2020, he has been director of the Oldenburg Research Unit for Children's and Youth Literature (OlFoKi), where the academic activities of various disciplines on this subject are brought together.

Boyken is a graduate of the University of Oldenburg, where he also earned his PhD in 2012. From 2009 to 2014 he taught at the Institute for German Studies and conducted research at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, the German Literature Archive and at the University in Torun (Poland). From 2013 to 2015 he worked with the bibliographical journal The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, before taking up a post as a junior lecturer at the University of Tübingen.

His research focuses on literature around the turn of the nineteenth century, post-war and contemporary literature, gender studies, narratology and drama theory. In his current projects he examines mediality in children's and youth novels and children's and youth literature of the post-war period.