Thomas Fuhr is a doctoral candidate in the Transcultural German Studies Ph.D. Program. He grew up in Germany, with an American mother and a German father, yet has gained substantial experience abroad: After spending one year in Oklahoma during high school, and another year teaching English as a volunteer in rural Eastern Bolivia, Thomas earned his master's degree in ethnology at the University of Mainz (minors: pedagogy, Spanish philology) with a thesis on syncretism and cultural revitalization. Thomas learned Portuguese during a semester in Lisbon, and has broadened his linguistic horizon by achieving an intermediate level of Turkish as well as acquiring the basics of Yorùbá and Tohono O'odham. His research interests include contemporary village novels, translation, and the strangely intertwined history of recurring Heimat booms with the idea of indigeneity in German literature. He has co-translated an essay on food, and published on the topic of critical dystopia. In his dissertation, Thomas examines the possible roles and functions of contemporary literature in an increasingly pluralistic German society, looking for new ways to express home, belonging and identity. His doctoral advisors are Assistant Professor Dr. Joela Jacobs (Tucson) and PD Dr. Leonhard Herrmann (Leipzig). Since starting his dual degree at the University of Arizona, Thomas has worked as an instructor for German language classes, as a Teaching Assistant for General Education classes, and he has designed and taught two fully online, Tier Two General Education courses, "Crisis and rebellion" in summer 2020 and "Contemporary German Culture" in summer 2022. In the academic year 2020-2021, Thomas held the position of Assistant Language Program Director of the German Department. He is part of the 2017-2018 University Fellows Program cohort, and has received a Russel J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship for the 2022-2023 academic year.