Henrike Schmidt

Henrike Schmidt, b. 1969 in Bonn, studied Slavic Literatures, History and Economics in Bonn, Köln and St. Petersburg. Her PhD thesis (2000) was dedicated to intermedial conceptions of poetic language in Russian poetry of the 20th century. Schmidt is Associate Professor at the Peter Szondi-Institute for Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin. She previously worked as a researcher at the Lotman Institute for Russian and Soviet Culture, Ruhr University Bochum, where she initiated, together with Katy Teubener and Nils Zurawski, the interdisciplinary research project Russian-Cyberspace.org (funded by the VolkwagenFoundation). This academic network explored the emerging digital and net culture in Russia and has since 2008 been continued in a different format and with a new team. Schmidt’s further research interests include contemporary Russian poetry and Bulgarian literature. She is currently working on a monograph on The Sociology and Aesthetics of Russian Literature on the Web. She translates Russian avant-garde and contemporary poetry into German (Sergej Birjukov, Anna Al’čuk) and is the editor (2008) of a collection of poetry by the Russian avant-garde poetess Nina Chabias.

Her special research interest within the overall thematic framework of the project The Future of Russian: Language Culture in the Era of New Technology is the interrelationship between digital folklore and ‘high’ literature, the emergence of transmedial narratives on the RuNet as well as the evolution of old and new literary genres in the interactive environments of networked culture.

Source: UiB website