ABOUT US
President
Margrit V. Zinggeler, Ph.D.
Margrit Zinggeler is Professor Emerita of German, Eastern Michigan University. She used the Grimms’ fairy tales as tools to teach German in her classes. Her research focused on the digital Grimm corpus in COSMAS to establish a methodology for a German grammar and a German phonetics textbook. She is the initiator of the non-profit Brothers Grimm Society of North America (BGSNA). She serves currently as the president of the organization.
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Vice-President
Claudia Schwabe, Ph.D.
Claudia Schwabe is Professor of German at Utah State University. She teaches and researches German fairy tales and folklore, fairy-tale pedagogy, otherness, and pop culture. She is author of Craving Supernatural Creatures: German Fairy-Tale Figures in American Pop Culture (2019), editor of The Fairy Tale and Its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture (2016), and co-editor of New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales (2016). Her most recent works have appeared in Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2024), Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies (2023, 2020), Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German (2021), and Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic: Subverting Gender and Genre (2020). She is currently co-editing The Routledge Companion to Fairy Tales and is serving as Vice President of The Brothers Grimm Society of North America (BGSNA).
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Secretary
Julie Koehler, Ph.D.
​Julie Koehler is an assistant professor at the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities and coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Humanities and Humanities Prelaw programs at Michigan State University. Koehler holds a Master’s in Education from the University of Michigan and a Master’s of German and PhD in Modern Languages from Wayne State University. Her research focuses on German fairy tales and folklore told and written by women. She is a founding member of the Brothers Grimm Society of North America and co-editor of reviews for the fairy-tale journal Marvels & Tales. Koehler recently published an anthology with colleagues in French and English, entitled Women Writing Wonder: An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales.
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Exhibit/Event Coordinator
Juliane Wuensch, Ph.D.
Juliane Wuensch is Assistant Professor and coordinator for German at Skidmore College, NY. Her research interests are nineteenth century German women writers, fairy tales written by women, and language pedagogy. Fairy tales are an integral part of her teaching, and she is excited every time students discover new aspects about old stories, and the subversive messages that are often hidden in traditional tales. She is working on a book manuscript about Amalia Schoppe, who published several fairy tale collections and was one of the most prolific and popular writers in nineteenth century Germany.
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Web Content Coordinator
Nina Morais, Ph.D.
Nina Morais is an Assistant Professor of German at Rhodes College. Her teaching is informed by her research, which focuses on questions of (trans)culturality and cannibalism as aesthetic practices, as well as fairy tales, and transnational and migration literature. Dr. Morais joined the BGSNA board in 2024 and is responsible for all things related to social media and online presence.
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Membership Coordinator
Lindy Ryan, Ph.D.
Lindy Ryan is an award-winning Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and guest faculty in Western Connecticut State University’s Creative Writing MFA program. A Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree, she is recognized for her scholarship, editorial work, and advocacy for women’s voices in genre fiction. Ryan is an award-winning author, anthologist, and short-film director whose works have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. A former board member for the Independent Book Publishers Association, she now serves on the Board of Directors for the Brothers Grimm Society of North America. She is the author-in-residence at Rue Morgue.
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Treasurer
Pablo a Marca, Ph.D.
Pablo a Marca is Research Associate at Brown University and Teaching Associate in Italian at Coastal Carolina University. His research focuses on the intersection between European fairy tales and posthumanism, using methods from animal studies, ecocriticism, and science and technology studies. His current project explores the connection between science and literary fairy tales in the long nineteenth century. He is also interested in Digital Humanities, building a digitized corpus of fairy tales and collaborating on a new version of the Decameron Web.
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Learn more about Pablo a Marca