Professor Karla Pollmann joins prestigious Academia Europaea

Tuesday, 28 November 2017

Professor Karla Pollmann, Head of the School of Humanities, has been elected as a Member of the prestigious European Society, Academia Europaea.

The Academia Europaea is an esteemed Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences, and comprises some of Europe’s leading experts in physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics and law. 

Membership is by invitation only, following peer group nomination and rigorous selection criteria. It currently has around 4,000 members drawn from the continent, including 72 Nobel laureates. Karla is now one of 38 eminent Classicists from the UK to be inducted into the Academy, which include fellow Classics colleague Professor Eleanor Dickey.

This makes the third invitation Karla has received this year to prestigious academic positions – earlier this year, Karla was re-appointed Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and was nominated Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Green College, University of British Columbia, Canada. This rare triple honour is testimony to Karla’s highly respected profile within the UK and overseas.  

Karla studied Classics, Divinity, and Education at the Universities of Tübingen, Munich, Cambridge, and Bochum, receiving her PhD in Classics from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1990. 

She joined the University of Reading in 2016 as Head of the School of Humanities and Professor of Classics, having taught previously in institutions including the University of St Andrews, the University of Konstanz, and University College London. Karla has also served as a visiting professor for many eminent global institutions. 

Having published more than 100 scholarly works, Karla is currently working on a new monograph, Augustine: A Very Brief History, which will outline the life and influence of the great early Christian thinker for a non-expert audience. The piece follows her work as Editor-in-Chief of the ground-breaking, two million word Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine. 

On her election, Karla said: 

"I am delighted to be considered worthy to join the Academia Europaea, an illustrious group of admirable academics. This is a great honour for me and I am hoping that I can make this membership fruitful to advance the ambitions of the University of Reading."

Dr Emma Aston, Head of the Department of Classics, said: 

"This is an immensely exciting appointment. It is a well-deserved recognition of Professor Pollmann’s significance within the discipline, and a further example of the esteem in which Reading Classicists are held in the international community of scholarship." 

Please join us in congratulating Karla on her prestigious appointment.