Alina Timofte is currently a Lecturer for Transferable Skills at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her teaching and research interests cluster around three themes: a) 21st-century skills (global citizenship, intercultural communication, and critical thinking), b) service learning, and c) academic writing.
She is also a practicing GlobeSmart Profile℠ certified consultant, utilizing the GlobeSmart Profile, a statistically validated cultural intelligence software developed by Aperian Global, mostly in academic contexts (as in her seminar “Globally Competent Citizens: Communicating Across Cultures”). Previously, she was a Research Fellow at the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration” at the University of Konstanz. The main activities within this academic position were working on a literary science project focusing on Austrian literature after 1945, as well as writing and publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
She holds a Master of Arts with honours in German Studies, with cultural theory, sociology, multilingualism, and translation studies as additional fields. In 2009, she received the Alumni Award for Excellence “Best Exam Achievement by a Graduate Student of Literature” at the University of Konstanz. Her Master’s thesis dealt with the solitude vs. sociability debate in connection with cultural criticism in the European literary anthropology of the 18th century, with a special emphasis on contributions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, J. G. Zimmermann, and Immanuel Kant.
Following her Bachelor’s in German Studies and Classical Philology at the University “Alexandru Ioan Cuza,” Alina worked as a Cultural Program Coordinator at the Goethe-Zentrum associated with Goethe-Institut in Iasi, Romania.
Alina has a track record of research, teaching, and curriculum design in cultural studies, intercultural communication, and literary criticism. Her work and study has been supported by grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG), German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), as well as from the Herbert-Quandt-Foundation (Humanities Fellowship), among others.
Her research articles, reviews, and translations have appeared in Limbus. Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, IASL: International Archives for Social History of the German Literature, Recherches Germaniques, Literaturkritik as well as in other journals and volumes.
On a more personal note, Alina lives with her German-Romanian-Senegalese family in the picturesque city of Konstanz, where they are jointly navigating the complex waters of living multilingually and multiculturally. She sees herself as an educator and a life-long learner at heart, and a world citizen in the making.
Work for CID:
Alina Timofte has translated KC5: Intercultural Communication, KC12: Third Culture Kids, KC22: Cultural Identity, KC49: Intersectionality, KC55: Stereotypes, and KC93: Transnationalism into German, and KC22: Cultural Identity into Romanian. She has also served as a reviewer for German.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 