Tim read for a BA in French and German at St Edmund Hall (with a year abroad in Pontigny and Freiburg im Breisgau) and an MSt in German at St John's College. After a year as a Chapel Intern at Pusey House, he returned to St Edmund Hall in 2024 to begin reading for a DPhil in German.
His DPhil project is focused on the reception of Hans Sachs (1494-1576) and his works in the German Democratic Republic, funded by the Crankstart Graduate Scholarship and supervised by Professor Henrike Lähnemann. Tim’s project will explore the relationship between images of Hans Sachs as an author figure and interpretations of his works in the GDR, and how both were harnessed to rehabilitate Sachs and integrate him into the canon of ‘national heritage’ by appropriating him as a popular and politically engaged writer who anticipated ideals of literature and personhood promoted by the East German state.
Tim was very pleased to give the 2026 Prawer Lecture before the English Goethe Society on the subject of “Hans Sachs in Weimar: Goethe’s Recovery of Hans Sachs and its Afterlife in the German Democratic Republic” on 27 February 2026. He is looking forward to speaking on the 1976 Hans Sachs anniversary in the GDR on the panel "Hans Sachs, II: In Time" and moderating the panel "Hans Sachs, I: On Time" at the 33rd International Medieval Congress on 7 July 2026.
Publications
a) Edited Volumes
(with Mary Boyle and Philip Flacke): Epic! Homer and the ‘Nibelungenlied’ in Translation (Treasures of the Taylorian, Series 3: Cultural Memory, vol. 7) (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2024).
(with Florian Gieseler and Henrike Lähnemann): ‘Mönchkalb’ and ‘Ursache und Antwort’ : Two Anti-Monastic Pamphlets from 1523 (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2023).
b) Essays
“'Es handelt sich, obwohl beide Dichtungen von Weltrang sind, um zwei grundverschiedene Dinge’ . Franz Fühmann's Radical Challenge to the Identification of the Nibelungenlied with the Iliad in Der Nibelunge Not (1973/87)”, in: John Butcher (ed.), „Da brachte man die Märe in andrer Könige Land“: Europäische Überlieferung und Strahlkraft des Nibelungenliedes. Band II - Europa. (Milan and Udine: MIMESIS Verlag, 2025), pp. 383-99.
“The Pamphlet in the GDR”, in: Henrike Lähnemann, Rahel Micklich (edd.), Martin Luther: Wider die Rotten der Bauern. Against the Bands of Peasants (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2025), pp. liv-lxxii.
“The Nibelungenlied from Socialist National Epic to National Socialist Epic”, in: Mary Boyle, Philip Flacke, Timothy Powell (edd.), Epic! Homer and the 'Nibelungenlied' in Translation (Treasures of the Taylorian, Series 3: Cultural Memory, vol. 7) (Oxford: Taylor Institution Library, 2024), pp. 25-39.
“Ein himmlischer Wegweiser. Stephan von Landskron, Die Himelstrass”, in: Martina Backes, Balázs J. Nemes (edd.), buochmeisterinne: Handschriften und Frühdrucke aus dem Dominikanerinnenkloster Adelhausen, Stadt und Geschichte Heft 24 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Stadtarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau, 2021), pp. 201-08.
c) Translations
(with Pauline Gümpel and Eve Mason), “The Second Pamphlet: Summer 1942”, in: Lloyd, Alexandra (ed.), Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2022), pp. 97-101.
(with Pauline Gümpel and Eve Mason), “The Second Pamphlet: Summer 1942”, in: Lloyd, Alexandra (ed.), The White Rose: Reading, Writing, Resistance (Treasures of the Taylorian, Series 3: Cultural Memory, vol. 1) (Oxford, Taylor Institution Library: 2019), pp. 127-42.
Lectures, Talks and Conference Papers
(forthcoming): “Temporalities and Medieval Anniversary Culture: The Hans Sachs Quatercentenary in the German Democratic Republic, 1976” - 33rd International Medieval Congress (07.07.26)
“Hans Sachs in Weimar: Goethe’s Recovery of Hans Sachs and its Afterlife in the German Democratic Republic” - The 2026 Prawer Lecture, English Goethe Society (27.02.26)
“Sameness and Difference in the Reformation Writings of Hans Sachs” - 22nd Annual Oxford German Graduate Symposium (28.06.25)
“Zwischen Reformation und Revolution: die Rezeption der Reformationsschriften von Hans Sachs in der DDR von 1953 bis 1983” - 20. Internationales Treffen Germanistische Mediävistik (11.04.25)
“Reinventing Walther von der Vogelweide in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries” - 6th Cambridge Undergraduate Conference in German Studies (08.02.20)