Full Professor for Slavic and General Literatures

Born on March 31st in Olten, Switzerland.

1981 - 1989 Studies in German, Russian and Philosophy at the University of Zurich, the Centre d'Etudes Russes in Meudon, France and in Leningrad.

1989-1995 Junior researcher at the Slavic Department, University of Zurich.

1993 PhD in Slavic Studies at the University of Zurich; visiting researcher in Warsaw and St. Petersburg.

1994 Lecturer for Russian at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

1998 Visiting Scholar at the Slavic Department, Harvard University, Cambridge Mass.

1996-1999 Research Project on Poetik einer Wendezeit. Epochenkrise und Metafiktionalität in der russischen Prosa der 1830er Jahre (Poetics of an Era of Change: Crisis and Metafictionality in Russian Literature of the 1830s) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

1999-2002 Member of the University of Konstanz' Special Research Area 511 'Literature and Anthropology'.

2003 Habilitation  at the University of Konstanz (Venia legendi: Slavic and General Literatures)

Since October 2003 member of the research project 'A New German History of Polish Literature', funded by the Swiss Science Foundation. 

Since 2009 Full Professor for Slavic and General Literatures at the University of Basel.

Research Interests

• Russian, Polish and Czech Literature from the 18th to the 21st century
• Literary theory and criticism, cultural studies
• Comparative literature
• Romanticism, avantgarde and the supernatural in literature

Select Bibliography

Th. Grob, 'Der Autor auf der Flucht. Anton Cechovs Reise auf die Insel Sachallin und an die Ränder der Literatur.' in: W. Kissen (Ed.) Flüchtige Blicke, Relektüren russischer Reisetexte des 20. Jahrhunderts (to be published at the same time in Russian)

Th. Grob, 'Der Steppenreiter in Seldwyla. Gottfried Kellers "Schmied seines Glückes", MEzapa und die Kontrafraktur des Romantischen', in: J. Berthold, Boris Previsic (Eds.), Texttreue. Komparatistische Studien zu einem masslosen Massstab (Bern 2008), 101-113.