Schofield, Dr Benedict
Further activities
School Responsibilities
Ben Schofield is the Senior Tutor for the School of Arts and Humanities. In this role, he oversees student support and welfare provision across the School of Arts & Humanities, and is available to both students and staff for consultation and advice. In particular, he is responsible for monitoring the School’s personal tutor system, offering support to Departmental senior tutors, and dealing with welfare-related issues that need to be handled at a level above that of the individual department or programme. As a member of the School Teaching & Learning Committee, the Senior Tutor is also involved in monitoring the School’s provision of teaching, and in considering student feedback via the National Student Survey. Ben Schofield is also a founding member of the University’s Working Group on Collaborative Degrees, and sits on the School Executive Board and the School Education Committee.
Departmental Responsibilities
Ben is the Convenor of the BA Programme in German; PhD Coordinator; Departmental Senior Tutor; Chair of the Staff-Student Liaison Committee (SSLC); and Chair of the Postgraduate Affairs and Research Committee (PARC). He also acts as Personal Tutor to students in all year groups.
International Partnerships
He is also responsible for the Department’s international partnerships, including the Department’s successful Joint-PhD-Net programme with the University of Stuttgart and the Sorbonne, Paris. He is currently also overseeing international collaborations with further universities in Germany (Humboldt, Berlin), the US (Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), as well as with institutions in India and China.
Esteem
Ben Schofield holds numerous external positions relating to German Studies. In 2009, he has invited to write the 19th century German Literature section of the Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, published by the Modern Humanities Research Association, and has also edited numerous journals and books. He is currently editing, together with Professor Dirk Göttsche, Volume 10 in the critical edition of Karl Gutzkow’s works (www.gutzkow.de), which appears both in digital and hard editions. He also reviews for the Modern Languages Review and New Books in German (www.new-books-in-german.com). Since 2009, he has also been Assistant Examiner for the International Baccalaureate A2 German papers. He is a member of the Association for German Studies (AGS, formally the CUTG), the German Studies Association of America (GSA), the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA), the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), the Gustav Freytag Gesellschaft, the Fontane Gesellschaft (including a Stipendiary Corresponding Fellowship), the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA), and the Association for Low Countries Studies (ALCS).
European Projects
Since 2003, Ben Schofield has been the chief academic advisor for the European Commission supported project Europa eine Seele geben / A Soul for Europe, an initiative which seeks to support the cultural diversity of the EU by stressing the significance of Europe’s cultural worth, in addition to its financial and political capital. In 2008, he was invited to become the topic/conceptual coordinator of this European project, and has spoken regularly at the Commission on cultural and historical topics, and participated in televised debates on cultural questions together with Commission President José Manuel Barosso and other European figures, including Wolfgang Schäuble and Daniel Barenboim. Ben Schofield has also worked together with the Körber Stiftung, Hamburg, the Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft, Berlin, and the Gedenkstätte KZ Buchenwald. These activities complement his academic work, providing alternative avenues for the dissemination of research through European policy formation and the media.