Sofia Cumming

Sofia Cumming is a PhD candidate working in the fields of Comparative Literature and modern European intellectual history at the School of Literature, Drama & Creative Writing under the supervision of Prof. Duncan Large. Since 2018, she has acted as an associate tutor and guest lecturer at the School, where she has taught undergraduate courses in Critical Theory, Literary Criticism, European literature and modernism. She is currently a doctoral associate at the Marc Bloch Centre for Franco-German Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences and was previously a visiting researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2020-2021).

Her doctoral thesis focuses on the life and work of German-Jewish writer, philosopher and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin. It takes an analysis of Benjamin’s engagement with French literature, as well as research into his Parisian exile and interactions with notable French intellectuals, as the foundation from which to explore the post-war reception of his philosophy in France. From a wider angle, the project aims to examine the history of Franco­-German cultural and intellectual relations throughout the twentieth century and and the extent to which Benjamin was an active transcultural intermediary between both nations. Reconciling Marxist and Surrealist analytical frameworks, it ultimately seeks to contribute to a recontextualization of Benjamin’s role as an innovator of both form and content within twentieth-century Critical Theory. 

She has hosted a number of academic events in relation to her research. In 2019, she was the co-organizer of Benjamin's Baudelaire: Constellations of Modernity, a workshop for early career researchers in affiliation with the Centre for Philosophy & Critical Thought as well as the screening event Berlin Childhood around 1900: A Film Project in Progress by Aura Rosenberg and Frances Scholz (both at Goldsmiths, University of London). In 2020, she co-founded the Walter Benjamin Research Collective which offers a platform for international collaborative discussion, debate and exchange to doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in the field of Benjamin Studies. 

Sofia has also presented and discussed her work internationally at numerous conferences, symposia, workshops and summer schools and is presently in the process of preparing several articles for publication. Her further research interests range broadly across twentieth century European literature and thought, modernism and the avant-garde, transcultural and transnational studies, literary translation as well as the intersections between literature, philosophy and visual culture. She is happy to be contacted about prospective collaborative research, writing or presenting opportunities.

 @SofiaCumming