Work performed included the following activities:
- Close-reading of primary texts against the backdrop of relevant historiographical sources on the Vehmic court.
- Study and critical assessment of major theoretical works on the Age of Goethe, the field of Law and Literature, and in Theatre and Performance Studies.
- Regular meetings with Professor Matthew Bell to monitor the progress of the project and discuss its further implementation.
- Design, organisation, and scientific coordination of two international research events at KCL, as well as a panel for the 2019 ISECS congress in Edinburgh.
- Organisation and moderation of two research seminars at KCL.
- Attendance and active participation in lectures, conferences, and research seminars in the UK, Germany, Italy, and the US.
- Completion of a teaching shadowing scheme and co-teaching of two BA modules at KCL.
- Mentoring of PhD students at KCL during two Work in Progress seminars.
- External supervision of an MA thesis in German Literature at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
- Attendance of webinars, workshops and training sessions to hone organisational and scientific skills.
- Service as German Department representative in the Early Career Committee of King's Faculty of Arts & Humanities for the duration of my position.
- Participation in the departmental meetings.
- Project management activities.
The results of the project were exploited and disseminated as follows:
- Administration of a Facebook page and Twitter account to advertise the project and communicate the main results of the action.
- Design and organisation of a two-day international workshop on “Law and Literature: New Perspectives and Methodologies” at KCL on 14–15 September 2018.
- Public lecture “‘Richter, die ihr richtet im Verborgenen’. Literary Representations of the Vehmic Court in the Age of Goethe”, held at the English Goethe Society, Senate House, on 31 January 2019.
- Research seminar “Legal Cultures and Literary Trials in the Age of Goethe”, held at KCL on 13 February 2019.
- Organisation of an interdisciplinary panel on “Representations of Legal Practices and the Law in the Age of Goethe” for the 2019 ISECS congress in Edinburgh (14–19 July 2019). Presentation of a paper entitled “Staging the Law. The Vehmic Court Motif in German Plays of the Late 18th Century”.
- Design and organisation of a two-day international conference “Staging Justice. Trials and the Law on the German Stage (18th-21st Century)”, held at KCL on 26–27 November 2019. Presentation of a paper entitled “Lay Judges and Lay Actors: Emancipating the Spectator in Ferdinand von Schirach’s ‘Terror’ and Rimini Protokoll’s ‘Zeugen!’”.
- Preparation and submission of: one article on the development of the Vehmic Court motif around 1800 for peer-reviewed journal “Publications of the English Goethe Society”; one article on political rhetorics and the question of legitimacy in Schiller’s plays for an edited volume; two entries for the “Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel 1660-1820”; one article on Falk Richter for peer-reviewed journal “Colloquia Germanica”.
- Preparation of a guest-edited journal issue of “Law and Literature”, which will include selected papers from the Law and Literature workshop and the ISECS panel.
- Preparation of a collective volume gathering a selection of papers from the “Staging Justice” conference.
