Dr. Catherine Smale

Biography

Catherine Smale studied French and German at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her MPhil in European Literature and Culture and PhD in German Literature, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She joined King’s College London in 2011 after a post-doctoral research fellowship at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on 20th and 21st-century German literature and cultural history, particularly the connections between literary form, political activism, gender, and disability. Catherine is particularly interested in the literary contributions of women writers from the German Democratic Republic, analyzing their strategies to provoke and engage readership. Her published work includes 'Phantom Images: Figure Ghost Work of Christa Wolf Irina Liebmann' and numerous journal articles on German literature and women’s writing. She has co-edited special journal issues and led projects on neurodiversity in contemporary German culture. At King’s, Catherine teaches modules spanning literature, culture, and history, from the Middle Ages to the present, and actively supervises postgraduate research students in related fields.

Research Interests