Fachschaft und Studiengangleitung haben sich gemeinsam fünf Fragen an Dozierende des Studiengangs überlegt, die Studierenden die Gelegenheit geben sollen die Dozent*innen ein wenig besser kennenzulernen.
Prof.in Dr.in Karoline Kühl – Webseite der EUF
1. How did you decide on your field of study?
I really had no choice. My family in which I grew up is multilingual in a non-academic way (meaning that nobody speaks any language or variety properly and never without mixing and switching languages constantly). I didn’t see it coming but when I started writing up my PhD on Danish as spoken in the Danish minority in South Schleswig (which is influenced a lot by German), friends and family weren’t surprised.
2. What was your best KSM seminar topic to date, and what would be a desirable topic for a future KSM seminar?
My first (and best!) KSM-seminar topic has been last semester’s course on ‘Language and migration’. It’s a topic that caught my interest during a research project on Danish emigrants and their descendants in Argentina and North America and I’ve been working on it ever since. The KSM-students brought a lot of interesting migration stories back to class by interviewing people with a migration history (once they overcame their shyness and learnt how to do an interview) which they then analysed by using the theoretical approaches we had studied together.
3. What book has particularly influenced you, or is a must read?
That’s hard to say. I read a lot and rather randomly, and it seems that different books affect you differently at different points in life. Non-fiction: Skautrup (Danish language history) for his immense knowledge and precision, or the weekly The Economist. Fiction: The books by Marilynne Robinson, in particular ‘Lila’.
4. Is the glass half full or half empty?
Always almost empty, always thirsty for more. For others? Always half full.
5. Looking back from your own experience, what advice would you give to your former student self?
Do not be scared of asking questions. Your university teachers would have loved to get some more questions, they would have enjoyed the interest, not considered you stupid and non-academic.