This year marks the 115th anniversary of Germany’s first International Women's Day, held on 19 March 1911. Here’s a look at some of the women behind the women's rights movement in Germany.

Jointly with the Chair of W+IGS and the President of the GLA, the President of the AGS, @pdavies.bsky.social, has sent a letter to the Principal of Heriot-Watt University opposing proposed staff cuts to the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies and threats to close German and Chinese.

Please follow us on LinkedIn if you're a member: www.linkedin.com/company/mode...

It was wonderful to meet prospective postgraduate students, together with my School of LLMVC colleagues, at yesterday’s @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social Postgraduate Fair. If you missed my talk on the MLitt European and Latin American Literatures and Cultures, I’ve included the most salient slides here.

Volume 33 of 'Austrian Studies' is now out! 'Austria and Film in the Twenty-First Century' Edited by Katya Krylova (@katyakrylova.bsky.social) and Dora Osborne. 👉 www.mhra.org.uk/publications... Access via @projectmuse.bsky.social 👉 muse.jhu.edu/issue/55395

15 years ago today I arrived on Downing Street in a cage. I've seen off Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak and I'm still going strong. Only two Prime Ministers have ever done longer stints here: William Pitt the Younger and Sir Robert Walpole. Bill and Bob - I'm coming for you... (Photos AP)

Am 4. März hält Fatima Naqvi (Yale), Mitglied unseres Expert:innenrats, im ORF RadioKulturhaus die diesjährige Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler-Lecture. Der Titel ihres Vortrags lautet: „Die Stimmenimitatoren. Thomas Bernhard und die KI“. Herzliche Einladung!

#WhyLearnGerman? To appreciate the unique ways the language and culture expresses luck! In German, a lucky person might be called a ‘Glückspilz’, or lucky mushroom. It reflects how luck has found them as quickly as mushrooms appear from the ground. It’s even inspired this sweet garden decoration!

YOU SIGNATURE MATTERS! Help us save Modern Languages at Leicester. Sign the petition: www.change.org/p/save-moder...

Language Explorers Scotland encourages language uptake in the senior phase with a short series of mentoring sessions led by university students with lived experiences of language learning and multiculturalism. Find out more: https://loom.ly/hHqAMlY

Not the first woman to "write herself out of a fragile state" but certainly one of the most interesting. Ingeborg Bachmann, on the occasion of what would have been her 100th year. blog.ogl.at/100-jahre-in...

A propos of a lecture I'm writing, here's film critic André Bazin taking the best possible break from thinking about realism and long takes. I think this might be the start of an occasional series (theme: cool people with cats).

Man, I forgot what it feels like to see actual good news on my feed. www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/6946...

DANKE to everyone who took part in #ShoutOutForGerman week! 🖤❤️💛 We loved seeing so much joy, enthusiasm and love for the German language!

Looking forward to Austrian author Kaśka Bryla’s residency at the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre (ILCS) in June and to discussing her latest novel “mein vater, der gulag, die krähe und ich” with her and translator Sheridan Marshall at the Austrian Cultural Forum #ShoutOutForGerman

The 78th National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies is coming up on 14 and 15 May, at ILCS. Do join us and tell us about your research! See the call for papers here – the closing date is 14 February! 👇 #ShoutOutForGerman

We asked guests to tell us their favourite German word at a reception for German-speaking civil servants, as part of #ShoutOutForGerman week. Alongside some top-notch animal names, we got some fantastic compound words and a few untranslatables too! What's yours? 🤔

The world's first Sesame Street traffic lights were turned on in Hamburg this week. German public broadcaster NDR (which is based in Hamburg) has co-produced the German version of the show for 50 years. Naturally, Bert is 🔴 and Ernie is 🟢!

Documents of the Nuremberg Trials can now be accessed online via: nuremberg.law.harvard.edu

From French and Spanish to Albanian and Farsi, languages have opened doors for me, grown understanding and taught me to see the world in full colour. Cutting them from schools and universities doesn’t just shrink the curriculum, it shrinks the life choices that all students should enjoy.

Resharing - please sign asap! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

22 November 1959: the Sandmännchen appears for the first time on East German television www.deutschlandfunk.de/vor-55-jahre...

Katya’s presentation concerned 5 recent films on Austria’s NS past, showing that progressive depictions of NS past was neither a lineal or even procress.

22 November 1948: the manufacture of garden gnomes is banned in the Soviet Occupation Zone for being 'too bourgeois' www.br.de/radio/bayern...

Kendra’s paper considers the narratology of silences in the two novels, exploring the queer dimensions of silence, and the importance of silence in discussions of heritage, culture, and family

Our second paper moves over to #AustrianStudies, with Katya Krylova’s paper titled “Contemporary Austrian Memory Culture on Screen”

Next up is Katy Heady, with a paper on Jewish male reactions to female suffrage in the mid-1920s. Katy’s paper has considered perspectives from liberal and orthodox authors on women’s political participation in Jewish communities

Our next paper is from Lorna MacCarron, who emphasises that going through menopause does not mean getting old in her paper “Embodied and Empowered: Aging Bodies in Ulkrike Draesner’s “Eine Frau wird älter””

#Day2 of the annual W+IGS conference begins! Out first paper is by Gwendolin Choi on “Staging Otherness, Staging the Self: Human Zoos, Exhibitions and the Colonial Imaginary”

Such a key point about cutting back on language provision - it’s not good for science and it’s not good for growth www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

W+IGS are saddened to hear today's announcement of the University of Nottingham's plans to close all modern language degrees. Read our joint statement, written together with our colleagues at #AGS and the #GLA on the AGS website: ags.ac.uk/statement-on...

Me going into the new academic year: youtu.be/nA-UBVKQFM0?...

Good to see Ingeborg Bachmann in The Nation:

This week from the archive: Bohemia Lies by the Sea by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Frank Beck and published in PN Review 228, March - April 2016. open.substack.com/pub/pnreview...

Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel return to the Eastern Sector of #Berlin after wartime exile in 1948.

📢📢📢 Upcoming Conference: 'Rethinking Weimar Cinema' (University of Oxford, 17 - 19 June 2026) Full Call for Papers: drive.google.com/file/d/1pxBI... Deadline: 31 October 2025 Please share widely with anyone who may be interested in joining us in Oxford next year!

The MLitt in 'European and Latin American Literatures and Cultures' @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social allows students to undertake in-depth study of aspects of literature, film, history, politics, thought, and culture in....Read more: www.abdn.ac.uk/study/postgr...

Your morning coffee/cuppa really does make you happier ☕️😃 That's according to a 🇬🇧🇩🇪 collaboration between researchers at Warwick & Bielefeld University, which found that caffeine consumption in the morning left people feeling significantly happier and more enthusiastic. #ResearchInGermany

Don't worry academics, it's still only August 32nd. Still plenty of time!

Starting school for the first time can be daunting, so children in Germany are given a 'school cone' (Schultüte) filled with goodies (usually sweets and stationary) to help them ease in to their new routine. 🥹

Just enjoying the dynamism of English modernist Cyril Power’s linocut ‘The Tube Station’ (1932)

Morning kitten Cock-a-doodle-meow!

This is sick. And it's all about monetizing Facebook views. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Geburtstagskind👇🏼

Die „New York Times“ bringt Österreich 🇦🇹 ganz groß raus. #SoundOfMusic

New favourite Aberdeen image, from 1932.

Becoming German (again)! More than 80 years after their families were stripped of their German citizenship by the Nazis, a group of 54 reclaimed their German citizenship today. Deputy Ambassador Christian Doktor welcomed the new Germans at today's naturalisation ceremony.