Ute Berns is professor of English Literature at the University of Hamburg. She has published monographs on drama and theatre of the 19th and 20th century (1997, 2012) and she co-edited collections on the poet and dramatist T.L. Beddoes and on medievalism (2007, 2011). She was a member of the interdisciplinary research project ‘Cultures of Performance’ at the Free University of Berlin, publishing articles on performance and performativity as well as the edited volume Solo Performances (2010). Her current interests include the performance and performativity of historical constructions of subjectivity as well as the interrelations of literature and science.