I was born in Finsterwalde one early morning in the last century in the year when the first woman flew into space, stayed home with my mom, went to school, left town, got a degree as a Diplomlehrer (MA and certified teacher) of German and Russian from a teacher training college, which is now part of the Universität Leipzig . As part of these studies, I spent ten months in my third year at the Калужский государственный педагогический университет in Kaluga, Russia. I left Germany about one year after unification and went to England and worked (part-time) as a lecturer in German at what became Sunderland University, while I was there. Then I got a faculty position and spent three years lecturing German and Linguistics at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Between 1995 and 2001, I was a lecturer in German Linguistics and CALL in the Centre for Computational Linguistics at UMIST in Manchester, where I also obtained my PhD in Language Engineering (Applied Linguistics).
Between 2001 and 2017, I worked as a professor of German (Applied Linguistics) in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Waterloo. I also served as the director of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies from 2009 to 2017. Between 2011 and 2018, I was the co-editor of CALICO Journal, which was published by Equinox Publishing Co. and is the society journal of the North American association for computer-assisted language learning or CALICO.
Since 2017, I live and work in San Diego. Here, I am the co-director of the Language Acquisition Resource Center (SDSU-LARC) and a professor of German and European Studies in the Department of European Studies at San Diego State University. Together with Karin Baumgartner, I am editing the society journal of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG): Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German.
I maintain this blog and site and use some of my non-work time to write and blog in the Texterium. You can find out more about my research and teaching on the next page(s). If you would like something more formal, my full CV is available also on this website.
Storm Hall sunset (San Diego State University) (© SDSU)
Panta Rhei Enterprise 