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apl. Prof. Dr. Joanna Rostek

apl. Prof. Dr. Joanna Rostek

Apl. Prof. Dr. Joanna Rostek

Englische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft

Otto-Behaghel-Straße 10 B
35394 Gießen

E-Mail:

Website: www.uni-giessen.de/rostek

Joanna Rostek
Joanna Rostek
News & Archive

05/2025: Joanna Rostek, Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Roger Norum argue in Times Higher Education that the value of co-authorship should be recognised in the social sciences and humanities. Click here to read their opinion piece.

05/2024: Joanna Rostek's award-winning monograph, Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age, is now available as open access, meaning that you can read it for free.

07/2023: Joanna Rostek has received the Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize for her monograph Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age. The prize is awarded biennially by the International Association for Feminist Economics for a work of original scholarship in the field of gender and the economy. Click here for more information.

09/2022: Joanna Rostek's monograph on Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age: Towards a Transdisciplinary Herstory of Economic Thought (Routledge 2021) has been awarded the second-book award (Habilitationspreis) of the German Association for the Study of English. Read the BARS 5 Questions Interview or listen to the In der Wirtschaft podcast (in German, available via Podcast Apps) to learn more about the book.

04/2021: The DFG-funded research network Methodologies of Economic Criticism, coordinated by Prof Dr. Joanna Rostek, Prof. Dr. Ellen Grünkemeier (Bielefeld) and PD Dr. Nora Pleßke (Magdeburg), has begun its work. Click on the link above to learn more about the aims and members of our network an on how to get in touch.

Research Interests

Research Interests

  • British and Anglophone Literatures, Cultures, and Media (esp. from 18th to 21st century)
  • Contemporary Anglophone Fiction
  • Literary and Cultural Theory
  • British Cultural Studies
  • Historical Cultural Studies
  • Women's and Gender Studies
  • Economic Criticism → see The DFG-funded Research Network Methodologies of Economic Criticism
  • Inter- and Transdisciplinary Literary and Cultural Studies
  • Migration Studies, especially Polish Migrant Literature and Culture in the UK and Ireland
  • Brexit in Literature, Culture, and the Media
  • Psychotherapy and/in Literature, Culture, and the Media

 

Monographs:

Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age: Towards a Transdisciplinary Herstory of Economic Thought. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. [Info] [5 Questions Interview] [Podcast #43]

My transdisciplinary book – which draws on literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and economics – explores the place of English women in the history of economic thought. Traditionally, the decades between 1770 and 1830 are seen as the ‘birth’ of modern economics. While men classical political economists of that period are widely known – e.g. Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, or David Ricardo – there is no study to date exploring women’s economic thought at that time. In view of this, my book firstly seeks to explain why this gap has been so persistent, and secondly, to fill it by presenting and discussing selected examples of English women's economic writing around 1800. My overall aim is to pave the way for a better understanding and acknowledgement of women's contributions to the economy and to economic thought.

Building on, among others, approaches from feminist economics, I demonstrate in the first part of the study that there is an androcentric bias at the heart of economics: our notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, economic topics, and economic genres of writing have for centuries privileged a vantage point that excludes the perspectives and experiences of women and that marginalises the type of knowledge women have generated and recorded in, among others, literary texts. This has resulted in an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory, with manifest consequences for economic practice up to this day. I argue that redressing this imbalance calls for a transdisciplinary methodology that bridges the gap between literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, history, and economics. Using such a transdisciplinary methodology in the second part, I present and discuss selected women writers' analyses of the economics of marriage, of women and paid work, and of moral economics. I draw on literary texts, pamphlets, and memoirs by Sarah Chapone, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, Priscilla Wakefield, Mary Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen.

My book reveals that once the androcentric bias of mainstream economics is recognised and removed and a transdisciplinary perspective adopted, the Romantic Age proves a treasure trove of economic thought by English women. Contrary to what standard accounts of the history of economic thought suggest, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women thinkers were participating in economic discourse and developing original ideas. They formulated demands for equal pay, investigated how women could earn money, negotiated property and marital rights, criticised cultural norms that led to women’s economic marginalisation, and challenged the institutionalisation of male economic privilege. Their critiques of the patriarchal economy expose the extent to which gender and economic outcomes are interlinked. They form an important counterpart to writings by men classical political economists and shed light on the history of women’s struggle for economic enfranchisement.

Women's Economic Thought was published in 2021 by Routledge. In 2022, it won the Second-Book Award ('Habilitationspreis') of the German Association for the Study of English (Deutscher Anglistenverband) and in 2023, the Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize of the Feminist Association for Feminist Economics.

 

Seaing through the Past: Postmodern Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. [Info] [Table of contents]

From Daniel Defoe to Joseph Conrad, from Virginia Woolf to Derek Walcott, the sea has always been an inspiring setting and a powerful symbol for generations of British and Anglophone writers. Seaing through the Past is the first study to explicitly address the enduring relevance of the maritime metaphor in contemporary Anglophone fiction through in-depth readings of fourteen influential and acclaimed novels published in the period 1978-2005. I argue that in contemporary fiction, maritime imagery gives expression to postmodernism's troubled relationship with historical knowledge, as theorised by scholars such as Hayden White and Linda Hutcheon. I interpret the novels against the backdrop of four aspects of metahistorical problematisation. Thus, for example, I read Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea (1978) in the context of auto/biographical writing, John Banville's The Sea (2005) as a narrative of personal trauma, Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) as investigating the connection between discourses of origin and the politics of power, and Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts (1997) as offering a postcolonial perspective on the sea and colonial history.

Seaing through the Past was published in 2011 by Rodopi/Brill and in 2012 won the dissertation award of the German Association for the Study of English (Deutscher Anglistenverband).

 

www.uni-giessen.de/rostek

Academic CV

Academic CV

  • since Apr 2025: Supernumary Professor of English Literature and Culture (apl. Professorin), Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany
  • Apr 2016 - Mar 2025: Professor of Anglophone Literature, Culture, and Media Studies (W1), Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany
  • Apr 2024 - Mar 2025: Interim Professor of British Cultural Studies (W2), Universität Leipzig, Germany
  • Apr - July 2023: Käthe-Leichter Guest Professor, Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria
  • Apr 2021 - Sep 2022: Interim Professor of English Literature (W3), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
  • 2020: Habilitation in English Literary and Cultural Studies, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany (winner of the Second-Book Award of the German Association for the Study of English)
  • 2010: PhD in English Literature, Universität Passau, Germany (winner of the Dissertation Award of the German Association for the Study of English)
  • 2006-2016: Lecturer / Assistant Professor at the Department of English Literature and Culture, Universität Passau, Germany

 

  • since 2021: with Ellen Grünkemeier and Nora Pleßke: co-founder and -coordinator of the DFG-funded research network Methodologies of Economic Criticism
  • 2014-2016: Fellow of the Fast Track Programme of the Robert Bosch Stiftung
  • Nov 2014, Feb 2018, Feb 2023: Visiting Lecturer, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland
  • July-Sep 2013: Visiting Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • March 2012, March 2013, March 2017: Visiting Lecturer, University of Lodz, Poland
  • Sep 2011: Visiting Professor, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma (Washington), USA
  • Oct 2009: Visiting Lecturer, Université de Strasbourg, France
  • March 2009: Visiting Lecturer, University of Stirling, Scotland

 

  • 1999-2005: International Cultural and Business Studies / Sprachen-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturraumstudien (Diplom), Universität Passau, Germany
  • Sep 2001 - May 2002: Université Laval, Québec, Canada (study abroad)
  • Oct-Dec 2004: British Council Germany, Berlin (Arts & Creative Industries Team)
  • Jan-June 2005: Leeds University, England (study abroad)

 

www.uni-giessen.de/rostek

Publications

Publications

Monographs

  • open access: Women's Economic Thought in the Romantic Age: Towards a Transdisciplinary Herstory of Economic Thought. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. [Info]

Reviews in: The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats; Oeconomia; The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought; History of Political Economy; Journal for the Study of British Cultures

  • Seaing through the Past. Postmodern Histories and the Maritime Metaphor in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. Postmodern Studies 47. [Info] [Table of contents]

Reviews in: Historical Justice and Memory Research Network; Anglistik; Journal for the Study of British Cultures; LWU: Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht

 

As Editor

  • The Aesthetics and Politics of Psychotherapy: Literary, Cultural, and Media Perspectives on ‘Healing the Soul’. Special Issue of the Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 72.2 (2024). [Info]
  • with Bernd Lenz. Harriet Martineau: Intellektuelle, Feministin, Soziologin. Kostproben ihres Schaffens. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2023. [Info]

Review in Soziopolis

  • with Anne-Julia Zwierlein. Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom. Special Issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.1 (2019). [Info]
  • with Anne-Julia Zwierlein and Ina Habermann. Literatures of Brexit. Special Issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.2 (2019). [Info]

  • with Ellen Grünkemeier and Nora Pleßke. The Value of Economic Criticism Reconsidered: Approaching Literature and Culture through the Lens of Economics. Edited section in: Proceedings Anglistentag 2017. Ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Jochen Petzold, Katharina Boehm, and Martin Decker. Trier: WVT, 2018. [Free download via www.wvttrier.de]

  • Ed. with Dirk Uffelmann. Contemporary Polish Migrant Culture and Literature in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. [Info]

Reviews in: Kritikon Litterarum; Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung

  • Ed. with Stephan Karschay and Gerold Sedlmayr. Hard Times 84 (2008): The Politics of British Humour.
 

Articles in Journals, Handbooks and Essay Collections

  • "The Aesthetics and Politics of Psychotherapy: Literary, Cultural, and Media Perspectives on ‘Healing the Soul’" ZAA 72.2 (2024): 113-126. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2024-2008
  • "Cicely Hamilton's Theodore Savage: Apocalypse Now … and Again … and Again". The Unknown 1922: Literary Explorations beyond Modernism. Ed. Ingo Berensmeyer and Dorothee Birke. Innsbruck: Innsbruck UP, 2024. 105-120. [Info]
  • with Bernd Lenz. "Harriet Martineau: Eine 'eminente' Viktorianerin". Harriet Martineau: Intellektuelle, Feministin, Soziologin. Kostproben ihres Schaffens. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2023. 13-46. [Info]
  • "The Good Pole in an Ailing Britain: An Imagological Approach to Polish Migration in British Literature". Polish Culture in Britain: Literature and History, 1772 to the Present. Ed. Maggie Ann Bowers and Ben Dew. London: Palgrave / Springer, 2023. 237-258. [Info]
  • with Gerold Sedlmayr. "Grayson Perry's Brexit Vases as National Psychotherapy: Feelings (and) Matter". Mentalities and Materialities. Ed. Philip Jacobi and Anette Pankratz. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2021. 129-148.
  • "Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey (1847)". Handbook of the English Novel of the Nineteenth Century: 1830-1900. Ed. Martin Middeke and Monika Pietrzak-Franger. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. 237–252. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110376715-013
  • with Anne-Julia Zwierlein. "Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom as Areas of Research in British Cultural Studies". Introduction. Brexit and the Divided United Kingdom. Special Issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.1 (2019), 3-16. [Info]
  • with Anne-Julia Zwierlein. "Literatures of Brexit". Introduction. Literatures of Brexit. Special Issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures 26.2 (2019), 125-140. [Info]
  • "English Women's Economic Thought in the 1790s: Domestic Economy, Married Women's Economic Dependence, and Access to Professions". Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought. Ed. Kirsten K. Madden and Robert W. Dimand. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. 33-52. [Info]
  • with Ellen Grünkemeier and Nora Pleßke. "The Value of Economic Criticism Reconsidered: Approaching Literature and Culture through the Lens of Economics". Introduction. Proceedings Anglistentag 2017. Ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Jochen Petzold, Katharina Boehm, and Martin Decker. Trier: WVT, 2018. 117-125. [Free download via www.wvttrier.de]
  • "Fictions of Capitalism: Accounting for Global Capitalism's Social Costs in Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost (2007), Sebastian Faulks's A Week in December (2009), and John Lanchester's Capital (2012)". The English Novel in the 21st Century: Cultural Concerns – Literary Developments – Model Interpretations. Ed. Vera Nünning & Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2018. 139-153. [Info]
  • "Implementing Feminist Economics for the Study of Literature: The Economic Dimensions of Charlotte Brontë's Shirley Revisited". Brontë Studies 43.1 (2018): 78–88. Access via: https://doi.org/10.1080/14748932.2018.1389153
  • with Stephan Karschay. "'Man haf fe do wha man haf fe do': Humour and Identity (Re)Formation in Bernardine Evaristo's Mr Loverman (2013)'. Anglistik 27.1 (2016). 125-136. Focus on Comic Representations in Post-Millennial British and Irish Fiction. [Free download]
  • with Dorothea Will. "From Ever-Lusting Individuals to Ever-Lasting Couples: Coupling (BBC2 2001-2004) and Emotional Capitalism". British TV Comedy: Cultural Concepts, Contexts, and Controversies. Ed. Jürgen Kamm & Birgit Neumann. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 311-324. [Info]
  • "Poetry of the Fifties and Sixties between Innovation and Tradition: Philip Larkin and the Movement". A History of British Poetry: Genres - Developments - Model Interpretations. Ed. Sibylle Baumbach, Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: WVT, 2015. 351-362. WVT Handbücher zum Literaturwissenschaftlichen Studium 18. [Info]
  • (as interviewer) with Joanna Kosmalska. "Irish-Polish Cultural Interrelations in Practice: Interviews with Chris Binchy, Piotr Czerwinski, Dermot Bolger, and Anna Wolf". Studi irlandesi. A Jounal of Irish Studies 5 (2015): 103-130. Download via: dx.doi.org/10.13128/SIJIS-2239-3978-16332
  • "Female Authority and Political Economy: Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau's Contradictory Strategy in Disseminating Economic Knowledge". Anglistentag 2013: Proceedings. Ed. Reingard M. Nischik and Silvia Mergenthal. Trier: WVT, 2014. 21-33. [Info]
  • "Managing the Unmanageable: Paradoxes of Poverty in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-34)". Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain: Literary and Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Barbara Korte and Frédéric Regard. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2014. 33-55. Culture & Conflict 5. [Info & view article]
  • "Refusing to 'Rest on the Sea's Bed': The Sea of the Middle Passage in David Dabydeen's 'Turner' (1994) and Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts (1997)". Navigating Cultural Spaces: Maritime Places. Ed. Anna-Margaretha Horatschek, Yvonne Rosenberg and Daniel Schäbler. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014. 65-81. Spatial Practices: An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature 18. [Info]

Reprinted as “Postcolonial Literary Historiography from within the Sea: David Dabydeen’s 'Turner' (1994) and Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts (1997).” The Hook of Desire: Slavery and David Dabydeen’s “Turner”. Ed. Lynne Macedo. Hertford: Hansib, 2023, 67-84.

  • "(Un)Othering the Terrorist: Responses to Terrorism in Two Contemporary British Plays". Deconstructing Terrorism. 9/11, 7/7, and Contemporary Culture. Ed. Jürgen Kamm, Jürgen Kramer and Bernd Lenz. Passau: Stutz, 2013. 95-116. PALK 11.
  • with Nora Pleßke. "Rubble or Resurrection: Contextualising London Literature by Polish Migrants to the UK". Literary London Journal 10.2 (2013). Web. http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/autumn2013/plesskeandrostek.html [Download PDF]
  • "Migration, Capital, Space: Econotopic Constellations in Recent Literature about Polish Migrants in Ireland". Anglistentag 2012: Proceedings. Ed. Katrin Röder and Ilse Wischer. Trier: WVT, 2013. 47-60. [Info]
  • with Dirk Uffelmann. "Czy polski migrant potrafi przemówić? Londyn w brytyjskim i polskim filmie, literaturze i muzyce". Rocznik Komparatystyczny 3 (2012). 213-238.

Reprinted in: Uffelmann Dirk, Polska literatura postkolonialna. Od sarmatyzmu do migracji poakcesyjnej. Cracow: Universitas, 2020. 547-578.

  • "From a Polish in Dublin to Polish Dublin: Retracing Changing Migratory Patterns in Two Recent 'Dublin Novels' by Polish Migrants". Polish-Irish Encounters in the New and Old Europe. Ed. Sabine Egger and John Mcdonagh. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. 117-130. Reimagining Ireland 39. [Info]
  • with Dirk Uffelmann. Introduction. Contemporary Polish Migrant Culture and Literature in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Ed. Joanna Rostek and Dirk Uffelmann. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011. 7-26. [Info]
  • "Life Course as a Ship's Course: Wavering Biographies in Contemporary Sea Voyage Narratives". From the Cradle to the Grave: Life-Course Models in Literary Genres. Ed. Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Sarah Herbe. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011. 57-68. Wissenschaft und Kunst 15.
  • "Living the British Dream: Polish Migration to the UK as Depicted in the TV Series Londyńczycy (2008-2010)". Contemporary Polish Migrant Culture and Literature in Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Ed. Joanna Rostek and Dirk Uffelmann. Frankfurt: Lang, 2011. 245-275. [Info]
  • with Dirk Uffelmann. "Can the Polish Migrant Speak? The Representation of 'Subaltern' Polish Migrants in Film, Literature and Music from Britain and Poland". Facing the East in the West: Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture. Ed. Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker and Sissy Helff. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 311-334. Internationale Studien zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 138. [GoogleBooks & Info]
  • "Endlich Pro-Age oder immer noch Pro-Beauty? Zwei Beispiele der Darstellung des alternden weiblichen Körpers in den Medien". Medienkulturen. Ed. Daniela Wawra. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2010. 53-73. [Info]
  • with Gerold Sedlmayr. "Berührung im Überfluss. Grenzregionen und Körperzonen in Ian McEwans On Chesil Beach (2007)". Grenzen: Konstruktionen und Bedeutungen. Ed. Dennis Gräf and Verena Schmöller. Passau: Stutz, 2009. 235-258. MTS: Medien, Texte, Semiotik Passau 2.
  • "Defeat through Counterfeit. Looking for Shakespeare in Julian Barnes’s England, England (1998)". Shakespearean Culture – Cultural Shakespeare. Ed. Jürgen Kamm and Bernd Lenz. Passau: Stutz, 2009. 131-147. PALK 8.
  • "Die Migration von (Stereo-)Typen der Weiblichkeit. Die Literatur von und über polnische Migrantinnen und Migranten in Irland und Großbritannien". Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 66.1 (2009): 181-209. [Info]
  • "Dreamland or Wasteland? Constructions of the Sea in Graham Swift’s Last Orders (1996)". Insular Mentalities: Mental Maps of Britain. Essays in Honour of Bernd Lenz. Ed. Jürgen Kamm and Gerold Sedlmayr. Passau: Stutz, 2007. 157-169.

Media & Public Outreach

  • with Roman Alexander Barton, Barbara Buchenau, Cedric Essi, Jens-Martin Gurr und Daneil Stein. "Zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen: Zur Zukunft der Fächer Anglistik und Amerikanistik." Forschung und Lehre 5 (2025): 32-33.
  • with Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Roger Norum. "The Value of Co-Authorship Must Be Recognised outside the Sciences". Times Higher Education. 15 May 2025. [Link]
  • with Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Roger Norum. "Ein Mehr, kein Weniger: Co-Autorschaft in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften." Forschung und Lehre 4 (2025): 34-35.
  • (as interviewee) "Zu den rechtsextremen Ausschreitungen in Großbritannien." Radio Interview. Mosaik. WDR 3. 9 August 2024.
  • (as interviewee) "Die literaturwissenschaftliche Analyse ökonomischen Denkens." Interview for the Podcast In der Wirtschaft, April 2022.
  • (as interviewee) "Fünf Freunde auf der BrexLit-Insel". Radio Interview on Brexit in Contemporary British Literature. Kulturwelt, Bayern 2, 20 December 2018.

Reviews

  • Rev. of A Herstory of Economics, by Edith Kuiper. The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought. June 2023. DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2023.2228558
  • Rev. of Imagined Economies – Real Fictions: New Perspectives on Economic Thinking in Great Britain, by Jessica Fischer and Gesa Stedman. Journal for the Study of British Cultures 27.2 (2020): 213-217.
  • Rev. of Thaddeus of Warsaw. A Novel, by Jane Porter. Eds. Thomas McLean and Ruth Knezevich. Review19 (3 April 2020). [Full text]
  • Rev. of Unbounded Attachment. Sentiment and Politics in the Age of the French Revolution, by Harriet Guest. Francia-Recensio 2016.1 (April 2016). [Full text]
  • Rev. of Global Migrants, Local Culture: Natives and Newcomers in Provincial England, 1841-1939, by Laura Tabili. H-Soz-u-Kult (May 2013). [Full text]
  • Rev. of A History of Canadian Culture, by Jonathan Vance. ZKS: Zeitschrift für Kanadastudien 32.1 (2012): 119-120.
  • Rev. of Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, by Stephen Greenblatt with Ines Županow, Reinhard Meyer-Kalkus, Heike Paul, Pál Nyíri and Friederike Pannewick. ZAA. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 58.4 (2010): 397-398.

Dictionary Entries

Entries in Kindlers Literaturlexikon Online. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2014:

  • Philip Hensher (Biogramm)
  • Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency (2008)

 

 

www.uni-giessen.de/rostek

Papers and Talks