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While numbers of students of German at British universities fell by 30% in the last decade, Korean saw an increase of 300%. In response, University Council of Modern Languages called for a transformation of the discipline by diversifying the research and teaching landscape. Dr Watroba's project addresses this call through a case study on the wide-ranging creative reception of the landmark German modernist writer Franz Kafka in contemporary Korean culture to investigate how literary brands such as the ‘Kafkaesque’ and the ‘Korean Wave’ interact. 

Dr Watroba has used her British Academy Talent Development Award to further develop her Korean language skills through intensive language courses in Seoul and Busan, significantly expand her network of research contacts in Korea, advance the emerging field of Asian German studies, and further the methodology of comparative Modern Languages through various research outputs and teaching activities, including: