Clara Hebel is a PhD candidate at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. She specialises in World Anglophone Studies with a focus on transculturality, planetarity, ecocriticism and the Blue Humanities. Clara has studied in London, Toronto and Frankfurt and completed her Master's degree “Moving Cultures – Transcultural Encounters / Culturas en movimiento – encuentros transculturales" at Goethe University in 2023. As a journalist, she interviewed authors such as Reni Eddo-Lodge and worked for community radio station ¡Vokaribe! in Barranquilla, Colombia. Currently, she is writing for the climate newsletter of the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. Her PhD project has the working title Transcultural Blue Humanities and Planetary Relationality in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures and Films and investigates how across vast regions, literatures and films are created that mobilise the aquatic for their expressions of relations. Her project is supervised by Prof. Dr Frank Schulze-Engler.

 Research Interests

• World Anglophone Studies
• Transculturality
• Planetarity
• Blue Humanities
• Environmental Humanities

Academic Publications

• With Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell, Laura Löslein, Michelle Stork and Yanming Wang. “Transcultural Conversations on Water: Collective Reading Practices and Critical Approaches to Astrida Neimanis' Bodies of Water (2017)." [under review]
• “The Aquatic Within: Transcultural Blue Humanities in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon" Matatu: Journal for African Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. 55, No.2 (2024)

Selected Presentations

• “Thinking with Water: Transcultural Englishes and Planetary Relationality" The 20th Triennial Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS): Transcultural Englishes in a Multipolar World, University of Nairobi (01-05 July 2025)
• “Time as Relational: Aquatic Heterotemporalities and Planetary More-Than-Human Entanglements in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures" 19th International Conference on Contemporary Narratives in English: The Relational Turn in the Literary Anglosphere: Writing Connection and Interdependence, Universidad de Zaragoza (21-23 May 2025)
• “Transcultural Blue Humanities and Planetary Relationality in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures and Films" Estuary Symposium 2024, Estuary: A Harbour for Salt and Fresh Water Studies Working Group (04 September 2024) 
• “Aquatic Time, Hydrofeminism and Planetary Relationality in the Oceanian film Vai (2019)“ The Flowing Image: The Ocean On-Screen, University of Southampton (28-29 August 2024)
• “Aquatic Planetary Relationality in Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island" Post/Colonial Environments – Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies, University of Zurich (09-11 May 2024)
• “Transcultural Blue Humanities: Negotiations of Human-Water Relations in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon" Relationality and More-Than-Human Storytelling Workshop, University of Augsburg (13-15 June 2023)
• “Professor Frank Schulze-Engler and the Moving Cultures Rhizome" Entangled Legacies: An International Symposium in Honour of Frank Schulze-Engler with Abdulrazak Gurnah und Homi K. Bhabha, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (10 February 2023) 
• “Futurizing a Legacy: Techno-Orientalism in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)" Guest Lecture BA English Seminar Fake Friends and Artificial Intelligence, University of Toronto (17 March 2022)

Academic Experience

• Co-convenor (together with Dr Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell) Environmental Humanities Slow Reading Group at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (since April 2024)
• Co-convenor Environmental Humanities Reading Group at the English Department of the University of Toronto (September 2021 to February 2022)

Selected Publications in Newspapers and Extracurricular Activities

• Co-author of the climate newsletter published by Frankfurter Rundschau (since 2022)
• „Leute, die sich Verbündete nennen, interessieren mich nicht.“ Interview with Reni Eddo-Lodge. Frankfurter Rundschau, 08.06.2019, pp. 24-25.
• “Barranquilla celebra su octava marcha LGBTI." Deutsche Welle Español, 07.2018, https://p.dw.com/p/30laQ.

Scholarships

• Doctoral Scholarship Heinrich Böll Foundation (since April 2025)
• DAAD PROMOS Scholarship (September to December 2021)

Professional Memberships

• GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies)
• EASLCE (European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment)
• Grade (Goethe University)
• Estuary: A Harbour for Salt and Fresh Water Studies
  

Contact

clara.hebel@em.uni-frankfurt.de