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Professor Juliane Vogel, Professor of Modern German Literature and General Literature Studies at the University of Konstanz, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2020, as the German Research Foundation (DFG) announced on Thursday, 5 December 2019. Juliane Vogel is one of the most eminent drama researchers in Germany whose interdisciplinary work, which combines literary, cultural and technical perspectives, has had a lasting effect on the research carried out at universities both in German-speaking areas and in North America. The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, which is endowed with up to EUR 2.5 million, is the most important research award in Germany and awarded annually by the DFG.

Juliane Vogel’s research interests include, amongst others, the fundamental principles of European dramaturgy, scenographies of drama in its historical context and from a cultural studies perspective, 18^th and 20^th-century drama and opera, avant-garde theatre as well as cutting and writing in modernist texts.

“What I find the most fascinating working with drama from antiquity to now is the idea of making an appearance. This relates to the organisation of space on stage, the choreography of steps and walking and the shaping of bodily presence – in other words the basic elements of a dramatic scene”, says Juliane Vogel. “However, these ‘performance protocols’, as I like to call them, also connect the world of opera and drama with the polis, the court, the bourgeois public or the home. This makes them relevant culturally – even anthropologically”, she continues. “I am very grateful to the German Research Foundation for selecting me to receive this year’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Being awarded such a distinguished research prize is a great honour and an additional incentive for me to continue and intensify my work in these areas, especially at the international level”.

Making an impact in Konstanz, Germany and beyond

“Juliane Vogel is an outstanding researcher who, not least due to her tremendous capacity for analysis and her keen eye for aesthetic detail, is able to reveal the mechanisms underlying cultural processes. On behalf of the entire University of Konstanz I would like to extend my sincerest congratulations to her for receiving the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and to express my gratitude for her unwavering commitment”, says Professor Kerstin Krieglstein, Rector of the University of Konstanz, adding: “Juliane Vogel’s work has had a major impact on drama research both in Germany and in the United States and it continues to inform ongoing discussions to this day. She has further been instrumental to advancing the university’s research priority in the area of Cultural Studies, for instance by serving on the board of the University of Konstanz’s Cluster of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Social Integration’ (2006-2019), which performed pioneering work in the area of cultural studies”.

About Juliane Vogel

Juliane Vogel earned her doctorate in Vienna in 1987, followed by positions as assistant, assistant professor and, later, professor (apl. Prof.). In 2001, after time spent abroad for academic purposes, she earned her Habilitation (postdoctoral qualification) on the topic of 19^th-century drama. Following a research stay at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna and at the University of California, Berkeley, she accepted the position of Professor of Modern German Literature and General Literature Studies at the University of Konstanz in 2007. In 2003 and 2004 Juliane Vogel held a guest professorship at LMU Munich and various guest professorships at Princeton University between 2007 and 2011. Since 2014 she has regularly lectured at the University of Chicago. Juliane Vogel was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2018 and 2019.
 

Facts:

• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2020 is awarded to Professor Juliane Vogel, Professor of Modern German Literature and General Literature Studies at the University of Konstanz.
• Most important German research award; presented by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and endowed with up to EUR 2.5 million.
• Juliane Vogel is one of the most eminent drama researchers in Germany, whose work has had a lasting effect on the research carried out at universities both in Germany and abroad.
• Her research interests include, amongst others, the fundamental principles of European dramaturgy, scenographies of drama in its historical context and from a cultural studies perspective, 18^th and 20^th-century drama and opera as well as avant-garde theatre. Juliane Vogel’s overarching focus is on what it means to make an entrance and the rhetoric of self-fashioning throughout history in and also beyond drama – in the media and in politics. She has recently been awarded the research project “Traveling forms” by the Swiss foundation Nomis which will focus on the mobility of forms and asks how changes of form relate to changes in location.