has been Chair of Romance Literature at the University of Potsdam since 1995. He studied in Freiburg and Madrid, wrote his dissertation on José Martí in 1990 at the University of Freiburg and his Habilitation on Roland Barthes in 1995 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Bavaria. Since 2010, he is an ordinary member of the Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe) and since 2012, he is Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France).

studied art history and theater in Munich and Paris. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Munich. Conducted translations from French to German, dramatic adviser in France, Germany and Switzerland, and worked at the Hessian radio station. Since 1996, she is the director of L’arc, an institution of the Migros Culture Percentage. Veronika Sellier has been teaching at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the Bern University of the Arts as well as at the University of Art and Design in Lucerne in the field of arts management.

graduated from Ibero-Romanic literatures and languages and received her Ph.D. in 1987 and wrote her post-doctoral thesis (1997) at the University of Basel entitled "Coleccionismo y literatura" on the manifold relations between collectionism and literature. She has been a visiting professor in Nancy and, since 2004, a full professor of Hispanic languages and literatures at the University of St.Gallen. Her main research areas include that of transcultural studies, especially the case of US-Latinos, the topic of failure in literature and Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas. Her current duties include that of a director of the Research Centre for Latin-American Studies (CLS HSG) and of the Research Training Group ProDoc on Transcultural Studies in Latin-America; moreover she is the director's delegate for the "Public Program" of the University of St.Gallenand the president of the art commission.