Hartmut Böhme is Professor for Cultural Theory and the History of Mentalities at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. After his dissertation on Robert Musil in 1973, he worked as a professor for Modern German Literature at the Universität Hamburg from 1977 onwards. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen. In the years 1996, 1998 and 2008 he worked as visiting professor in the U.S. and Japan. His pioneering studies helped to position Cultural History and Theory within the “concert of disciplines”. From 2009 until 2010 Böhme was a Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy in Weimar, he was awarded the Hans-Kilian-Award in 2011. As a founder and coordinator of the Collaborative Research Centre 644: “Transformations of Antiquity” he has contributed significantly to all aspects of the afterlife of antiquity and the pivotal role these ideas played in the construction of the cultural canon. With Iris Därmann he has founded the CSG-II within TOPOI which could thus profit from his expertise in the history of cultural theory and the reception of antiquity.

His further research interests include: the theory of space, the history of knowledge, and the correlation between literature and visual art. Alongside his research on the cultural history of nature and the elements, the anthropology of the senses and emotions, Hartmut Böhme took an alternative stance on the history of Modernity in the form of a highly regarded study on the history and theory of fetishism.