Kerstin Pfeiffer

My academic background is in English Literature, Medieval & Modern History, and Art History, having completed a Magister Artium Degree at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universiaet in Mainz (Germany) before moving to the UK. I joined Heriot-Watt as a lecturer in the Department of Languages & Intercultrual Studies after working at the University of Stirling for a number of years and completing a PhD in English Studies there.  My thesis focused on how medieval English religious drama evokes and theorises emotions and thus participates in contemporaneous debates about the links between sensation, emotion and cognition. While my research focus has changed somewhat since then, the boarder question of the social and cultural work that drama does (or can do) is still one that guides my research interests.