Karla Pollmann - Biography#

Pollmann received here academic training in Germany, studying Greek, Latin, Theology, and Education (PhD 1990 Bochum, habilitation 1994 Konstanz). She has spent most of her academic career in Great Britain, with invited research visits and lectures in Europe (particularly the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Denmark), the US, Canada, Algeria, and South Africa. She is currently one of the Co-Investigators in a four-year project funded by the EU that includes six European Universities and nine non-academic partners, in a so-called Innovative Training Network comprising 14 PhD students (2016-19). Previously, she was engaged in formal academic co-operations with the Universities of Pisa and of Brazil. She is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Århus University, Professor Extraordinary of Classics at the University of Stellenbosch, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Green College, UBC, Vancouver. She had offers of chairs of Latin or Classics from Bielefeld, Mainz, St Andrews, Dresden, Kent and Reading.

Pollmann is acknowledged as both a Classicist and a theologian, and she is recognized as world-leading in the study of Augustine and his reception. She is best known for her work on early Christian hermeneutics, culture, literature, and reception (especially of Augustine of Hippo), and on Latin literature. Her monographs on Augustine and Statius have become standard works, and the Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine with her as Editor-in-Chief has been hailed as a reference work for generations to come.

Pollmann has received numerous academic honours and awards from various research foundations internationally, and has successfully directed various collaborative interdisciplinary research enterprises with international, in particular European, partners. For three years she had been heavily engaged in academic leadership positions at the University of Kent (Canterbury), as Head of Department, Deputy Head of School and Deputy Dean, before she was head-hunted in 2016 by the University of Reading, where she now serves as Head of the School of Humanities. Here, building international, especially European, partnerships, is one of her specific remits.