Farewell: Prof. Dr. Emer O’Sullivan – E as in Enid
2025-09-01 Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking, or Harry Potter: For more than thirty years, the Professor of English Literature has dedicated her research to children’s and young adult literature—particularly in the field of comparative studies. One author has always held a special place in her heart.
Emer O’Sullivan and Enid Blyton share something in common: the rounded letter E, whose middle stroke flows seamlessly into the next letter. Generations of readers recognize the iconic signature of Enid Blyton, emblazoned on every cover of the Famous Five series and every cassette of the Adventure audiobooks. Emer O’Sullivan only recently noticed the striking similarity to her own signature at a conference dedicated to the British author: “I adored her books as a child and must have unconsciously imitated her signature. I had quite forgotten that until now.”
Emer O’Sullivan grew up in Dublin, the city with the highest density of writers in Europe and the most Nobel laureates in literature worldwide. Even as a schoolgirl she devoured volumes borrowed from the public library, and she soon fell in love with German literature as well: “I was fascinated by Heinrich Böll and Bertolt Brecht,” the professor recalls. In order to read both authors in the original, Emer O’Sullivan began learning German. After completing her studies at University College Dublin, she moved to Berlin, where she earned her doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation on the aesthetic potential of national stereotypes. In it, she examined images of England in German children’s and young adult literature after 1960. Imagology, comparative literature, and intercultural hermeneutics remain central to her scholarly pursuits to this day.
She went on to complete her habilitation at the renowned Institute for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Research at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her study “Kinderliterarische Komparatistik” (Comparative Children’s Literature) is considered groundbreaking and was awarded the IRSCL Prize for Outstanding Research. The English edition received the Children’s Literature Association Book Award in 2007. More recently, Emer O’Sullivan was named an Honorary Fellow of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature in Salamanca, Spain. Next year she will receive the International Brothers Grimm Award for Children’s Literature Research in Osaka, Japan. With these honors, Emer O’Sullivan has now received the most prestigious international distinctions in her field.
Yet Emer O’Sullivan is not only a scholar. Together with her husband, the linguist Prof. Dr. Dietmar Rösler, she co-authored numerous bilingual German-English books for children and young adults, such as “I like you – und du?”. And for both of them, as for all authors, there is encouraging news: young people are reading more again—thanks to platforms such as BookTok and other social media.
As a university teacher, O’Sullivan also succeeded in kindling enthusiasm for literature through her dedicated teaching. In collaboration with the Literaturbüro Lüneburg and her seminars in the Complementary Studies program, she invited audiences to literary celebrations at the Heinrich Heine House: they staged events around Ulysses, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, and most recently, the centenary of The Great Gatsby. These festivities combined performances, installations, exhibitions, music, and costumes. Emer O’Sullivan lived literature together with her students.
Now Emer O’Sullivan is retiring, taking with her her lifelong love of books—along with her extensive collection of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde. Throughout her many years of dedicated scholarly activity at Leuphana, she collected special editions, foreign-language picture books, and scholarly works, filling the ceiling-high shelves of her office. And yes, among them are books by Enid Blyton. Incidentally, O’Sullivan shares more than just the initial E with the famous author: Blyton’s famous twin characters, known in German as Hanni und Nanni, are in the original the O’Sullivan twins, she points out with a smile.
Emer O’Sullivan studied English, German, and Spanish at University College Dublin (B.A.), followed by German and English at Freie Universität Berlin (M.A.). In 1999 she completed her habilitation at Goethe University Frankfurt. After serving as Acting Chair at the University of Essen, she became a lecturer at the Goethe University Frankfurt Institute for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Research. In 2004 she was appointed Professor at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Since 2018 she has represented the university on the Board of Trustees and served as Dean of Studies for the Leuphana Semester and the Complementary Studies program. She also chaired the doctoral committee and advised students as a trusted mentor for the German National Academic Foundation. For nearly a decade, O’Sullivan has been co-editor of the Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung e.V. (Yearbook of the German Children's Literature Research Society), with a particular focus on German-language works. As Chair of the Literaturbüro Lüneburg since 2013, she has overseen numerous projects and strengthened the bond between Leuphana and the city’s cultural life.