Dr Nicholas Martin MA, DPhil

• D.Phil., University of Oxford 
• M.A., University of Oxford 
• B.A., University of Oxford, in Philosophy and Modern Languages (First Class Honours) 

I have over 30 years of teaching and research experience in higher education. I am currently Reader (Associate Professor) in German at the University of Birmingham, having worked previously at the University of St Andrews (1995-2004) and the University of Oxford (1990-94). My core competencies include academic writing and expertise in German language and culture, as well as in the history of European ideas. 

I received my bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in German and Philosophy from the University of Oxford. I have published extensively on modern German intellectual history - especially Nietzsche and his legacies - as well as the cultural history of war and political violence in Germany.

I enjoy working with postgraduate students who share my research interests. I have supervised 12 PhD and 14 Master’s dissertations to successful completion. 

As Director of the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham (2013-20), I led an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners who engage with contemporary issues and debates in German and European politics, society and culture. I have also been the Editor-in-chief (2013-17) of the St Andrews-based journal *Forum for Modern Language Studies* and the founding Director of the Graduate Centre for Europe at Birmingham (2005-15). 

I have held visiting professorships at California State University Long Beach and Loyola University Maryland. Before joining the higher education sector, I worked in investment banking for S. G. Warburg in London and Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. I am a qualified and active umpire in the Warwickshire County Cricket League.

Dr Martin teaches the following undergraduate courses in the Department of Modern Languages:

• German language (at all levels) 
• Nietzsche (final-year option)
• German First World War Writing (final-year option) 
• Thomas Mann (second-year option) 
• Cultures of Protest and Terror in West Germany, 1967-1977 (second-year option)  

He also teaches on a variety of Modern Languages and interdisciplinary programmes at postgraduate level.

Nicholas Martin has supervised 12 PhD theses and 14 Master's dissertations to successful completion.

PhD topics he has supervised include: 

• Shakespeare and German Unification
• A comparison of Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
• Dionysian creativity in works by D’Annunzio and Thomas Mann
• Nietzsche, Goethe and the idea of “Bildung”
• Literary uses of biblical imagery in works by Hartmann von Aue, Kafka and Thomas Mann
• A comparison of Lion Feuchtwanger’s and Abbas Khider’s depictions of discrimination against minorities
• Nietzsche, Adorno, and the Paradoxes of Enlightenment.

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Find out more - our PhD German Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

PhD title

Untimely Aesthetics: a critical comparison of Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe and Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1993)

Nicholas Martin researches aspects of modern German intellectual history and the cultural history of war and political violence in twentieth-century Germany.

His research specialisms are:

• The reception of Weimar classicism 
• The roots and reception of Nietzsche's thought 
• The First World War in German culture and memory 
• The writings of Thomas Mann 
• Nazi cultural practices and their legacies

• Editor-in-chief, Forum for Modern Language Studies
• Editorial Board member of Publications of the English Goethe Society and Journal of War and Culture Studies