News Archive

A student assistant position is available at the Chair of English Culture and Literature Studies starting February 1, 2026, to support the organization of the EU GREEN-funded conference "RIVER TALK/Paroles de fleuves". The international conference will take place from June 17 to 19, 2026, at the University of Angers in France and is being organized jointly by OVGU and the University of Parma. The aim of the conference is to examine rivers and their local ecology from a literary and cultural studies perspective, focusing on various dimensions of river concepts – from representations of rivers to the voice of the rivers themselves.

The position involves assisting with programme planning in cooperation with the French partner university and communicating with conference participants from countries in the EU Green Alliance. Applicants should be enrolled in at least their fifth semester of a BA programme or their first semester of an MA programme at OVGU, have very good English and French language skills, be able to work independently and on their own initiative, be interested in topics related to environmental and blue 
humanities, and have excellent communication skills and experience in intercultural communication. If you have any questions about the advertised position, please contact PD Dr. Nora Pleßke. Please send your complete application (cover letter, CV, references) by email to by 6 January 2026. For more information, please refer to the job application.

"Medicine and Film" continues the discussion on productive interdisciplinary collaboration between medicine and the humanities that began in the 2025 summer semester in the lecture series "Medical Humanities: The Treatment of Illness in the Humanities". In the winter semester 2025/26, the focus will be on the representation of medicine and medical topics in film. Primarily, various dimensions on screen such as science and ethics, medical representations of healing practices and diseases, power relations between doctors, nurses and patients, and cultural notions of healthy/sick bodies will be foregrounded. From the perspective of cultural studies and medical humanities, the topic will therefore be examined through the relations of the body – from care, flesh, skin, cells and mind to the deep psyche. The FILM & TALK format frames the film screening with a guest lecture by an academic and an open discussion led by FHW students.

Any questions you may have about the event will be answered by the transSCAPE team () around Max Jokschus and PD Dr. Nora Pleßke.

A literary evening in the Port of Science serves to present the results of student work from two seminars held by the Chair of Anglophone Cultural and Literary Studies in the summer semester 2025. Students in the seminar "The Empire Writes Back" focussed on the relationship between canonical English novels and their rewriting by authors from former British colonies. The question of the techniques and aims of this practice of "writing back" and the function of literature in the reappraisal of European colonial history are at the centre of their interest. Over the course of the semester, students in the "Affective Landscapes" seminar have devoted themselves to the question of the cultural transformation of material spaces and explored how different spaces are formed and experienced culturally. In the course of six excursions, urban and natural spaces were explored and the way in which we perceive, shape, and claim spaces was discussed.

On Thursday, 30 October 2025, the transSCAPE team cordially invites you to the fifth Town Hall Meeting. This open format brings together stakeholders from the the academic, urban, and cultural communities to actively shape the future of Magdeburg's Port of Science. The focus is on transfer formats and the question of how knowledge transfer and cooperation between the city, society, science and business can be successful. Registration is requested.

The event starts at 4 p.m. in the Old Town Hall in Magdeburg.  Visitors can expect a varied programme. After a keynote speech by Prof. Dr Christian Antz on the topic of "Magdeburg – nothing is impossible! Be a pioneer and shape the future", transfer formats can be experienced in direct exchange during a mini walk & talk. A mini film & talk concludes the event with an artistic look at teaching and knowledge transfer.