Professor Ottmar Ette is the Chair of Romance languages and Comparative literature at University of Potsdam, Directorof the Humboldt Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2014, he was elected Honorary member of the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). Since 2013, he has beena member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and member of the“Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin.” In 2012, he was inducted into the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France) as Chevalier. He also has beena regular member of the Academia Europaea since 2010.

Professor Ette's research focuses on Alexander von Humboldt, literary studies as a science of life,living-together or “Conviviality,” TransArea studies, and Francophone and Hispanophone literatures inside and outside Europe. He has written and published almost 40 monographs in different languages, more than 60 anthologies and over 500 articles. Ottmar Ette directs the Research Project on “Alexander von Humboldt's American Travel Diaries: Genealogy, Chronology, and Epistemology”(2014-2017) and, since 2015, an eighteen-year project on “Travelling Humboldt - Science on the Move” of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.