Bio

Prof. Dietmar Rösler studied German language and literature and media studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he was later awarded a PhD. He worked as a junior member of staff in the German Departments of the University College Dublin and the Freie Universität Berlin and as a teacher in the German Department of King's College, University of London. In 1996, he moved to the JLU where he took up the chair of German as a Foreign Language department. His main research areas are intercultural learning, teaching grammar, textbook design, and the role of digital media in foreign language learning. He has published extensively on these and related topics. In 2017, he was awarded the  Otto Behaghel Professorship at the Centre for Media and Interactivity.

Prof. Rösler has acted as peer reviewer and external examiner in the UK, Ireland, Germany, and Hong Kong. In 1992, he was awarded a one-year research fellowship by the British Academy, the result of which was the book Deutsch als Fremdsprache (Stuttgart: Metzler 1994).

At the JLU, he was responsible for the department of German as a Foreign Language, coordinating the Master degree studies on German as a Foreign Language and Language Technology and Foreign Language Learning, a programme involving the modern languages departments and computational linguistics. He oversaw the introduction of the European Credit Transfer System in the German Department, was coordinator of European Exchange Programmes, and served a term of office as dean and HoD.

He is a Distinguished Senior Professor of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, a member of the board of the ZMI, a member of the Beirat Germanistik of the German Academic Exchange Service, one of the editors of the series Giessener Beiträge zur Fremdsprachendidaktik (publisher: Narr, Tübingen) and of the journal Informationen Deutsch als Fremdsprache, as well as a member of the boards of the online journal German as a Foreign Language (London) and the journal Deutsch als Fremdsprache. At the ZMI, he is the chair of the section Educational Linguistics and is responsible for the research project Digital media in the German-language development of prospective student refugees.