My vita activa as an academic began in the early 1980s. I had started out as a scholar of modern German literature, but research for my doctoral thesis had sparked a particular interest in narrative theory. With this my focus shifted from interpreting literary texts in terms of their meaning to a more form oriented and general approach: how are narratives constructed and what is that makes something work as a narrative? This question is at the core of a discipline called Narratology.
Soon after I began to explore how one might research this very question by looking at narratives through the ‘lense’ of a computer – a novel approach called Humanities Computing that emerged when PCs became readily available in the mid 1980s. The use of computational models and machines to analyse symbolic artefacts – texts, languages, images, music, indeed anything of interest to a humanities scholar – is nowadays termed DH, short for Digital Humanities. The intersection of DH and Narratology fascinated me, and this interdisciplinary field became my intellectual home until retirement in 2020.
Detailed information on my research projects and teams, a full CV and a list of publications are available on the archived version of my academic website.
Welcome address at the DH 2012 International Conference / Universität Hamburg 17 July 2012
Do I miss the vita activa? No — but I do look back on this phase of life with gratitude. It was fulfilling and stimulating, and not just on a cognitive level: for what I particularly enjoyed were the enriching encounters with students and colleagues. Across cultures and disciplines, we shared a deep curiosity in how one might bridge the gap between the universal domain of the abstract – forms, numbers, algorithms – and the indivualistic domain of meaning, that is, the realm of our very own human perception, cognition, belief and emotion.
A Romantic at heart, I believe that the two experiences go hand in hand, and that one is there to question and enrich the other — just as my vita activa is now being questioned and enriched by contemplation and reflection, the true passions of vita contemplativa.
PS: But don’t worry; still nothing wrong with enjoying life as it comes — viva gaudium!