This is an extract from a mail sent on behalf of the organising committee of the last Anglo-German Colloquium:
“This mail is prompted by the shocking news of Dr Anne Simon’s threatened compulsory redundancy from the Department of German and comes with the urgent request that this decision be reconsidered. […] I also write on behalf Professor Dr Ricarda Bauschke of the University of Düsseldorf and Dr Sebastian Coxon, Reader in German at University College London, together with whom I organized the latest (the twenty-first) in the series of Anglo-German Colloquia on Medieval German Literature, to which Dr Simon has made signal contributions over the years. […]
Bristol has for decades been in the fortunate position of having on its German staff distinguished scholars in the medieval field who have contributed significantly to maintaining the Department’s position among an élite group of institutions which can offer the opportunity for in-depth study of German as an academic discipline. Dr Simon is the latest in the line of these scholars and by no means the least of them. Indeed, through her additional expertise in the early modern period and such fields as visual culture, not to speak of courses which she has developed in the modern period, she offers a range of teaching and possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration which are rare in their scope.”