Advisory Board

The Center for European Studies Faculty Advisory Board is chaired by Center Director Priscilla Layne and comprises UNC-Chapel Hill faculty and administrators from across the College of Arts & Sciences and the Professional Schools as well as the University Library System.

Priscilla Layne

Priscilla’s first book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, is forthcoming April 2018 with the University of Michigan Press. In this book, she examines how, following WWII, German artists often associated white, rebellious male characters with black popular culture, because black culture functioned as a metaphor for rebellion. Priscilla is currently working on her second book, Out of this World: Afro-German Afrofuturism, which focuses on Afro-German authors’ use of Afrofuturist concepts in literature and theater. In addition to this project, some of the broader themes she is interested in are German national identity, conceptions of race and self/other in Germany, cross-racial empathy, postcolonialism, and rebellion.
Dr. Layne was recently interviewed on about her new book White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture.

After serving as Vice President from 2020-2021, Dr. Layne is now President of the American Association of Teachers of German through 2023.
3211 FedEx Global Education Center, CB#3449, UNC-Chapel Hill
Office Phone: (919) 962-4634

Executive Director Katie Lindner

Katie Shanahan Lindner received her BA in International Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MA in Trans-Atlantic Studies (TAM Program) from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Before beginning TAM, she worked at the International Visitors Council in RTP, which is where she discovered her love of organizing programs and international education. Upon receiving her MA, she from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin where she managed programs including TAM, Euromasters, German-Turkish Masters as well as the international doctoral program at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences. She focused on such aspects as program development, student and career services, international recruitment, and collaboration with international partners. Katie Lindner returned to UNC and joined CES in 2015, after living in Berlin for sixteen years.

3211 FedEx Global Education Center, CB#3449, UNC-Chapel Hill
Office Phone: (919) 962-6765
klindner@email.unc.edu