Dr Conor Brennan
Biography
I grew up in Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, attending Irish-speaking state schools (Gaelscoileanna). My first degree was in English & German at Trinity College Dublin, followed by an MSt in German at Oxford and a PhD in Comparative Literature at TCD. Before taking up my current post as a researcher at St John's, I was a lecturer in German at Oxford from 2023-2025. I’ve also spent stretches of time along the way in Freiburg, Vienna and Innsbruck.
Teaching
My current teaching includes a Master's module on Posthuman Subjectivities, which I co-teach with Prof. Barry Murnane. For undergrads, I teach an author paper on Ingeborg Bachmann and provide supervision for undergraduate dissertations on various topics – one current example is Afro-German identity in the works of May Ayim and Sharon Dodua Otoo. My teaching at Oxford to date covers German literature from 1770 to the present; special authors Kafka, Bachmann, Rilke, Bernhard and Brecht; German-English translation; and first-year literature and textual commentary. I have also provided lecture courses on Kafka, German literature since 1945, and writing after Auschwitz, as well as a special seminar on Ingeborg Bachmann’s 'Malina'.
Research Interests
My research interests are mostly in the area of environmental humanities, including animal studies, ideas of ecological aesthetics, and postcolonial responses to the climate and biodiversity crises. I am also interested in discussions of comparative literature and world literature more broadly; debates around translation, multilingualism, and identity; and the intersection between literature and philosophy. Many of the German-language authors I'm especially drawn to are Austrian, including Ingeborg Bachmann, (arguably!) Franz Kafka, Christoph Ransmayr, Thomas Bernhard, and Marlen Haushofer. On the comparative side, I've worked on authors such as Richard Flanagan, Olga Tokarczuk, Han Kang, and Marina Carr. As an Irish speaker, I've recently begun to focus more on the role of minoritised languages within world literature and their relationship to specific local habitats and ecologies.
Recent Publications
- ‘Letters in the Web of Life: Towards an Ecological Philology’, co-authored with Caitríona Ní Dhúill, German Life and Letters 78.3 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.12447
- ‘From Todesarten to Artensterben: Re-reading Bachmann through an ecocritical lens’, Austrian Studies 32 (2024) https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/article/953522/summary
- ‘Fallmeister Franza: Journeys of Mastery in Ransmayr and Bachmann’, Austrian Studies 31 (2023) https://muse.jhu.edu/article/919431
- ‘An axe for the rising sea: Kafka’s Anthropocene afterlives’, Oxford German Studies 51 (2022) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00787191.2022.2116811
- ‘In Echo’s Cave: Gendered Guilt and Anthropocene Repercussions in Texts by Christoph Ransmayr and Valerie Fritsch’, Austrian Studies 30 (2022) https://muse.jhu.edu/article/877912