Prof. Matthias Freise

Born in Hannover in 1957, Matthias Freise completed a M.A. in Slavic Studies (Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian) and philosophy (main interests: Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger) at the University of Hamburg in 1982. He then went on to complete a PhD on Bakhtin’s philosophical aesthetics and a second book on Chekhov’s prose. He was a visiting researcher at Torun University in Poland and later at the Moscow State University, before becoming assistant professor at Oldenburg university, and then the research group head at East Central European Humanities Cente in Leipzig, and, following that, a full professor Salzburg university. He has been at the University of Göttingen since 2003 where his focus is on Slavic literatures. His research interests include Czeslaw Milosz, Bakhtin, 19th century Russian literature, literary history, narratology, comparative literature. He has published in German, English, Russian, Polish, Croatian, and Czech.

Freise is a board member at the department for comparative studies, and is the deputy dean of humanities faculty. He has also been a visiting professor in Krakow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, and Shanghai. Freise is a member of the Karl Lamprecht Gesellschaft für Universalgeschichte.In Göttingen, he is implementing a new program on World literature.