Koblenz Research Unit
Body • Travel • Literature

Upcoming International Conference
Traveling Bodies Exposed: Vulnerability, Embodied Experience, and Travel Literature.

The conference will take place on November 27, 2026, at Ghent University, and is organized in collaboration with the Research Center “Body Cultures in Motion (BOCULT)”. Please find more information on the Conference and the Call for Papers here.

The “Koblenz Research Unit Body • Travel • Literature” was founded in 2025 to serve as a collaborative space for international and interdisciplinary exchange and cooperation in the field of travel and travel writing. Drawing on different scholarly traditions and disciplinary perspectives, our members are interested in the role of the body in the practice of traveling and writing about it. As a medium of self- and world exploration, the body and corporeality are central to the analysis of travel (writing) in a variety of ways, a focus reflected in the diverse work carried out within the research unit (see Publications and Activities).

The Koblenz Research Unit grew out of the Scientific Network “Traveling Bodies: Bodies and Corporeality in Travel Texts / Reisende Körper: Körper und Körperlichkeit in Reiseliteratur”, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2022-2026 and coordinated by Professor Uta Schaffers (Department of German Studies) and Professor Nicole Maruo-Schröder (Department of English and American Studies), who now serve as speakers of the new unit.

The unit aims to connect established and early-career researchers and their respective disciplinary approaches and expertise in this field, and to facilitate scholarly exchange as well as the sharing of information about ongoing research. In the future, we hope to broaden our disciplinary perspectives and to establish a productive interdisciplinary dialogue. We therefore invite scholars from a variety of backgrounds, e.g., including literary, cultural, linguistic, tourism and social studies, to contact us (see Members page)