Thorsten Ries
Assistant Professor — Ph.D., German Literature, Joint Ph.D., Hamburg University (Germany), Ghent University (Belgium).

Contact
- E-mail: thorsten.ries@austin.utexas.edu
- Office: BUR 372
- Campus Mail Code: C3300
Interests
Digital Humanities; Digital Learning; German Literature from the 18th to the 21st Century; Theory, Methodology and Practice of Scholarly Editing, Genetic Criticism and Textual Criticism, Digital Literature, Digital History, Literary Theory, Methodology and Discipline History of the Germanistik.
Biography
Dr Ries joined the Department of Germanic Studies in 2021 as Assistant Professor with specialism in German literature from the 18th to the 21st century, digital learning and digital humanities. His primary research focus is the foreign language curriculum in the context of digital humanities, (digital) scholarly editing, born-digital archives and digital forensics.
Dr Ries is initiator and director of the Digital Humanities Lab at the Department of Germanic Studies at UT (DHLab@GS). DHLab@GS acts as a DH hub at Department of Germanic Studies, based on UT Austin‘s campus (BUR 326). DHLab@GS is also the platform on which Ries is organizing the DHLunch@GS online talk series.
Dr Ries has worked on a historical range of authors, including Friedrich Hölderlin, Gottfried Benn, Thomas Kling, Michael Speier, and others, and is specifically interested in writing processes, scholarly editing, born-digital archives, digital literature and the vast spectrum of digital humanities methods in general. He works on multimodal digital learning concepts focusing on remodeling the language and cultural studies curriculum with digital literacy, digital skills and a digital-first perspective in mind.
Dr Ries is also a Visiting Professor (5%, 06/2021-08/2024) at the Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Belgium. Before coming to Austin, he has been teaching at Regensburg University, Antwerp University, Ghent University, Hamburg University, and conducted research at projects at Ghent University and the University of Sussex, UK.
Selected Publications:
Thorsten Ries. “Digital History and Born-Digital Archives: Digital Forensic Dimensions.” In: Materialities of the Archive in a Digital Age. Ed. by Eirini Goudarouli and Andrew Prescott. Proceedings of the British Academy. London: The British Academy, 2021, ca. 25 pp., [in print].
Thorsten Ries. “Digitale Literatur als Gegenstand der Literaturwissenschaft. Ein multimodales Forschungsprogramm”. In: Text + Kritik, Sonderband Digitale Literatur II, eds. Hannes Bajohr, Annette Gilbert, 2021, [in print].
Thorsten Ries. “Digital Learning: Eine neue didaktische Normalität - Erfahrungen mit der digitalen Lehre unter Covid-19 Pandemie-Bedingungen.” In: Kai Bremer, Thomas Ernst, Andrea Geier, Jan Horstmann, Ariane Larrat, Thorsten Ries, Claudius Sittig (Ed.): Konferenz Digitale Lehre Germanistik. Fachinformationsdienst Germanistik. Germanistik-im-Netz. University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg. Published 02/22/2021, 2021. URN: http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/gups.59285, ISBN: 978-3-88131-101-4.
Chr. Annemieke Romein, Julie Birkholz, Max Kemmann, James Baker, Michel De Gruijter, Alfred Mereno Penuela, Thorsten Ries, and Stefania Scagliola. “State of the field: Digital History”. In: History: The Journal of the Historical Association 105.365 (April 2020), pp. 291-312, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12969
Thorsten Ries. "Das digitale ‘dossier génétique’: Digitale Materialität, Textgenese und historisch-kritische Edition. In: Textgenese in der digitalen Edition. Hrsg. v. Anke Bosse und Walter Fanta. Beihefte zu Editio, 45. Berlin et al.: de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 91–116. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110575996-007.
Mike Kestemont, Thorsten Ries, and Gunther Martens. “A computational approach to authorship verification of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s contributions to the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen 1772-1773”. In: Journal of European Periodical Studies (JEPS) 4.1 (Summer 2019), pp. 115–143. url: https://ojs.ugent.be/jeps/issue/view/1771
Thorsten Ries and Gábor Palko, eds. Born-Digital Archives. Special issue of International Journal of Digital Humanities 1.1 (Mar. 2019). url: https://link.springer.com/journal/42803.
Thorsten Ries. “The rationale of the born-digital dossier génétique: Digital forensics and the writing process: With examples from the Thomas Kling Archive.” In: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DSH) 33.2 (June 2018), pp. 391–424. url: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqx049.
Thorsten Ries. “Philology and the digital writing process.” In: Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap 9 (2017), pp. 129–158.
Thorsten Ries. Verwandlung als anthropologisches Motiv in der Lyrik Gottfried Benns: Textgenetische Edition ausgewählter Gedichte aus den Jahren 1935 bis 1953. 2 vols. Exempla Critica 4. Berlin et al.: De Gruyter, 2014, 1039 pages.
Thorsten Ries. “‘die geräte klüger als ihre besitzer’: Philologische Durchblicke hinter die Schreibszene des Graphical User Interface: Überlegungen zur digitalen Quellenphilologie, mit einer textgenetischen Studie zu Michael Speiers ‘ausfahrt st. nazaire.’” In: Editio: Internationales Jahrbuch für Editionswissenschaft 24.1 (December 2010), pp. 149–199.