Department of English / Institut für Anglistik

Welcome to the English Department at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, where you can study in one of Germany’s student-friendliest cities. We believe that the JLU is a great place to begin or to further your education in English and Anglophone Studies and Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Our students tell us that they appreciate studying at the JLU English Department because the faculty cares. And we do. We aim to engage students in course materials and facilitate their interacting with them in ways that go beyond traditional classroom learning. Students are offered various avenues for demonstrating their work and having it evaluated. This can include making films, doing creative writing, contributing to library exhibitions, and compiling learning portfolios. Students also enjoy choosing from a broad range of topics in their course programs, from the “History of the English Language” to “World Englishes” in Linguistics, from “Early Modern Drama” to “Feminist Dystopias” in Literary, Cultural, and Media studies, and from “Task-Based, Cultural-Sensitive Instruction” to “Heterogeneity” in Teaching English as a Global and a Foreign Language. All of our courses are taught in English and feature new insights into participatory media cultures. This includes studying hybrid learning techniques as well as learning how to conduct synchronous online teaching on a variety of platforms. We present innovations in media, cultural, and gender and sexuality studies, language pedagogy as well as in linguistic analysis and theory.

The Department is proud of its traditional research foci in corpus linguistics and varieties of English as well as in narrative and cultural studies in addition to empirical, classroom-based studies. Students can participate in new research in these fields in departmental courses as well as at the Giessen International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture. The Department’s degree programs in Intercultural Communication and Business give you the opportunity to combine a focus on Business Studies with your interests in languages and culture. Our practical language teaching classes now allow you to certify your proficiency in English with the UNIcert program. Our Study Abroad programs enable you to combine your studies in Giessen with a semester at one of our many, far-ranging partner universities, should you wish to.

Beginning in the Winter Semester 2020/2021, the Department offers a variety of innovative new degree programs. Some highlights of these programs include the following. The BA and MA degrees in Intercultural Communication and Business (ICB) are extremely hands-on. They integrate practical business training into the study program while continuing to maintain focus on the popular topic of English Business Communication. They also offer students thorough introductions to Intercultural Communication. The new BA program in Anglophone Studies welcomes international students as well as German nationals by allowing them to study exclusively in English. You can now choose a major and a minor from the Department’s three major fields of Linguistics, Literary, Cultural, and Media Studies, and Teaching English as a Foreign Language. The BA degree also offers a module in Gender, Sexuality, and Diversity that investigates the newest research and debates in these fields and allows you to engage with new forms of activism relating to gender and sexuality. The BA and MA degree programs in Anglophone Studies feature hands-on introductory courses. There, you can learn the basics of performing linguistic analysis, or doing media, literary and cultural interpretation, or the essentials of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in the twenty-first century. For more information on and overviews of the new degree programs, please see:

Intercultural Communication and Business (ICB)
Anglophone Studies BA/MA   

Flyer MA Anglophone Studies

German and Anglophone Studies (starting date to be announced)

For more information on the sections of the Department, please see: