Anna Wagner
Anna Wagner has been working at Justus Liebig University Giessen since 1 August 2018. From 1 December 2019, she supported the Center for Media and Interactivity (ZMI), now the Centre for Diversity, Media, and Law (DiML), as an assistant and in the secretariat. Since 1 November 2024, Anna has also been working as an administrative assistant for Greta Olson, bringing her extensive experience and organisational skills to this role.
Dr. Melanie Kreitler
Melanie Kreitler is a postdoctoral researcher at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. Her Ph.D. thesis, Fictions of Experience: Mental Illness in Puzzle Films and Complex Television, considers the impact of narrative complexity on meaning-making and viewers’ understandings of lived experiences of mental illness. She has published on complex film, video games, the television musical, and the intersections of medical and media discourses, and co-edited a Special Issue of On_Culture on the theme of “Illness, Narrated” in 2021.
Dr. Simona Adinolfi
Simona Adinolfi is a postdoctoral Research Associate in the MeDiMi sub-project “Dehumanizing, Victimizing, or Universalizing? How Images of Migration Interact with Human Rights Discourse”. Closely collaborating with Greta Olson, she is researching the affective responses to images of migration in legacy and digital media. She obtained her Ph.D. in Literary Studies with a thesis titled Narrating Migration in the 21st Century. A Posthumanist Approach to Anglophone Novels at Ghent University, Belgium.
During her Ph.D., she took part in the Horizon 2020 project “OPPORTUNITIES: For a Fair Narrative on Migration”, in which she analyzed migration narratives in the Italian public media landscape. Her research interests include narrative theory, critical posthumanism, migration studies, and digital media studies.
Lilli von Stengel (M.A.)
Lilli von Stengel has been a research assistant at DiML since October 2024. After completing her B.A. in English Studies and Cognitive Linguistics at LMU Munich and the University of Oxford, Lilli went on to receive her M.A. in British and American Cultures from the University of Hamburg. There she worked at the Department of American Studies as a student assistant to Prof. Susanne Rohr and Prof. Ulrich Adelt (University of Wyoming).
Supervised by Greta Olson, Lilli is also a doctoral researcher in Cultural Narratology at the GCSC and IPP at JLU. Her dissertation explores the cultural narratives of #MeToo in the US and UK, focusing on their relationship to media and digital trauma. Lilli’s main research interests lie in digital media studies, gender and sexuality in pop culture, and Trumpism.
Felix van Groningen (B.A.)
Felix van Groningen is a student assistant to Professor Olson and wrote his Bachelor’s thesis on The Cultural Work of Trans Men in Games under her supervision. After successfully finishing his Bachelor’s, he is now currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Anglophone Studies at the Justus Liebig University Giessen with a major in Literary, Cultural and Media Studies and a minor in Linguistic Studies. His main interests lie in gender and queer studies, but branch off in a variety of topics.
In his free time Felix likes to learn new languages and has recently discovered translating as a passion of his, having already translated one published book. He hopes to work further in translating in the future.
Maureen Schwarz (B.A.)
Maureen Schwarz is a student assistant to Professor Olson and wrote her Bachelor’s thesis on Rethinking Sexual Consent in Fifty Shades of Grey: A Feminist Film Reading under Dr. Melanie Kreitler’s supervision. After successfully finishing her Bachelor’s in Anglophone Studies at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, she is now currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen. Her main interests lie in gender and queer studies, critical legal studies, feminist legal studies, feminist jurisprudence as well as cultural legal studies.
After completing her Master’s degree, Maureen would like to pursue a Ph.D. and one day work either in research and teaching or for an international women’s rights organization.
Sarah Emmerling (B.A.)
Former Team Members
Greta Olson 