Julia Poertner

Originally from Bremen, Germany, Dr. Julia Poertner first started teaching at the German Department in 2006/07 while completing her M.A. in German Studies at Dalhousie. She studied Modern History, German Literature, and English Philology at Albrecht-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg (M.A., 2010) and holds a PhD from Dalhousie in Interdisciplinary Studies (2020).

Dr. Poertner’s teaching specializations are German language and translation as well as interdisciplinary topical courses, such as ‘Germany and the Environment’. Her research revolves around the questions what kind of stories we tell each other and the ways in which we tell them. She is especially interested in narrativity as an interdisciplinary tool in (environmental) Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr. Poertner’s dissertation, titled “Narratives of Nature and Culture: The Cultural Ecology of Elisabeth Mann Borgese”, seeks connections between narratives of nature and culture in the fiction and nonfiction works of Elisabeth Mann Borgese, youngest daughter of German novelist, Thomas Mann.

In her spare time, Julia is (rather vainly) trying to copy Roger Federer’s forehand. Her cooking is much more successful.