Ritchie Robertson

Ritchie Robertson FBA (born 1952) has been Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of The Queen's College since 2010.[1]

He attended Nairn Academy (1965-70) and went from there to Edinburgh University, where he took first-class Honours degrees in English Language and Literature (1974) and German Language and Literature (1976). In 1976 he became a graduate student at Lincoln College, Oxford, where in 1981 he was awarded a D.Phil. for a thesis on Edwin Muir's contacts with German literature. From 1979 to 1984, he was Montgomery Fellow and Tutor in German at Lincoln College. From 1984 to 1989, he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Downing College, Cambridge. In 1989, he was appointed to a Tutorial Fellowship at St John's College, Oxford, where he remained until 2010, when he was appointed to the Taylor Chair of German (renamed the Schwarz-Taylor Chair as of October 2020). He has held a fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation (1992 and 1998), during which he worked with Professor Gerhard Kurz at the University of Giessen. He has been a visiting professor at Queen's University, Canada, and at the Friedrich-Schlegel-Graduiertenschule of the Free University of Berlin. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2004, and has chaired its section on Modern Languages and Literatures.

In 1990, together with Edward Timms, he founded the yearbook Austrian Studies, which he co-edited until 1999. From 2000 to 2010, he was Germanic Editor of the Modern Language Review. Professor Robertson co-directs the Oxford Kafka Research Centre with Professors Carolin Duttlinger, Barry Murnane and Katrin Kohl. He is convenor of the book series Germanic Literatures, published by Legenda. His book The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 is due to be published by Penguin Books (London) and HarperCollins (New York) in February 2021. He is currently writing a book on Friedrich Nietzsche for the series Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, London). For a full list of his publications, please go to

Ritchie Robertson is married to Katharine Nicholas and is the stepfather of her children Miranda and John Mourby.