Katrin Bernad
Research Interests
Materiality of writing and the book; memory and remembrance studies; theories of the artist’s book and book aesthetics; intermediality (literature – image – object); poetics and aesthetics of the fragment; spatial theories (topological and medial spaces); literary theory (poststructuralism, theories of materiality); literature and law / legal philosophy (testimony, violence, norm).
Bio
Katrin A. Bernad is a literary and cultural scholar whose interdisciplinary profile brings together literary analysis, artistic practice, and institutional experience.
She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Zurich (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Cultural Analysis) in cooperation with the European University Viadrina (Faculty of Cultural Sciences). Her dissertation examines material aesthetics as a form of memory in contemporary lyrical artists’ books. It investigates literary procedures in which memory does not primarily unfold narratively but is instead structured within the very form of the book. At the center of her research is the question of how writing and visuality function as material orders that render visible dimensions of experience which elude purely linguistic representation. Her work focuses particularly on the book as an aesthetic and epistemic medium that operates between text, materiality, and conceptual space, thereby enabling forms of literary knowledge that move beyond linear narrative models.
Her scholarly perspective is shaped by many years of professional experience in the international art and cultural sector, most recently in a transdisciplinary art and architecture studio operating between Berlin and Beijing. This experience does not serve merely as biographical background but functions as an integral component of her theoretical work, in which literary studies are closely intertwined with media and material theory.
Bernad is also connected to literary and art-related networks in Berlin, Zurich, and Melbourne. In addition to contributing occasionally as an author to zaesur-poesiekritik.de, she leads the platform’s public relations and serves as its central liaison to the editorial team.
She is furthermore a member of the Zentrum für Medien in Brandenburg (ZEM) and Women in Arts and Media (WAM), Berlin, and is engaged in advisory work for artists.
