Leonie Unkel

Leonie Unkel is a PhD candidate with the DFG-funded research group “Practicing Place: Socio-Cultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations” at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Before starting her PhD, Leonie completed two bachelor’s degrees in German Language, Literatures and Cultures and English and American Studies at the University of Bamberg. Afterwards she further pursued her studies in English and American Studies in the European Joint Master’s Programme at the University of Bamberg. As part of her master’s programme Leonie spent one term abroad at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. During her master’s, Leonie attended the Graz International Summer School Seggau with the overall theme “Re-Measuring, Re-Calculating, Re-Counting: State – Society – Religion in Transition”, where her first article, “‘The Sun always has a way to reach us’: Exploring Innocence and Experience in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun” was published in Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought Volume IX. In 2023, she successfully completed her master’s degree with a thesis titled: Towards a Narratology of Age(ing): A Study of Time and Space in Selected Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro. At its centre, her thesis argued that narrative time and narrative space are not universal narrative categories but are dependent on age(ing) in their realisation. Her thesis allowed her to combine her main research interests in postclassical narratologies and age studies and forge a band between the two disciplines. At Practicing Place, Leonie is further developing this perspective in her PhD project, ‚(Dis) locating Age(ing): Narrative Negotiations of Age(ing), Gender, and Place in Contemporary (Autobiographic) Comic Art‘.