Karolina Watroba

I joined the University of Edinburgh in 2025 where I am a lecturer in German Studies and a researcher in modern literature, film, and culture, specialising in European modernism and its global reception and continuing relevance today. I work across several languages, including German, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, and Korean.. Previously I was a Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford (2019-2024) and a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala (2024-2025).

I studied at the University of Oxford, where I completed a BA in German (2011-2015), with a Year Abroad studying Swedish and Spanish at the Humboldt-Universität and European Studies at the Studienkolleg zu Berlin (2013-2014, funded by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes); MSt in German and Comparative Literature (2015-2016, funded by an Ertegun Scholarship); DPhil (PhD) in Modern Languages (2016-2019, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship); and a PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2021-2022, leading to accreditation as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy/Advance HE).

Research
My first book, "Mann's Magic Mountain: World Literature and Closer Reading" (Oxford: OUP, 2022), is the first study of Thomas Mann's landmark German modernist novel "Der Zauberberg" ("The Magic Mountain", 1924) that takes as its starting point the interest in Mann's book shown by non-academic readers, moving from interwar Germany and Soviet Russia to present-day Hollywood and Japan, and beyond.

My second book, "Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka" (London: Profile, 2024), aims to introduce this reader-oriented approach to a wider audience. It is an unconventional biography which tells Kafka's story through the stories of his readers around the world, focusing on Oxford, Berlin, Prague, Jerusalem, and Seoul.

I have also written on a range of other topics, including the afterlife of the Weimar-era German mountain film in contemporary Canadian cinema, Latin American responses to Alexander von Humboldt's journey around 1800, Navid Kermani's writings on Eastern Europe, uses of culture in times of crisis, and the new global novel.

I have given several named and keynote lectures, including the Ida Herz lecture at the English Goethe Society and the Grimm Lecture at the Waterloo Centre for German Studies (University of Waterloo, Canada).

I have also presented my research in English, German, and Polish at conferences and seminars organized, among others, by the American Comparative Literature Association, British Comparative Literature Association, German Studies Association, Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, German Screen Studies Network, Deutsche Thomas Mann-Gesellschaft, and Korean Kafka Society.