Honorary Professorship (chair) for Franz Leithold

The University of Freiburg has granted an honorary professorship to the head of the University Library’s (UB) Media Center, Dr. Franz Leithold. The Faculty of Philology proposed Leithold for the distinction in recognition of his outstanding contribution in the area of “media practice.” Leithold laid the foundation for the development of teaching media skills when he established the Media Center at the UB in October 2000. The Faculty of Philology Dean Prof. Dr. Frank Bezner says, “The infrastructure developed by Franz Leithold has great significance for many areas of study at the University of Freiburg, and particularly for Media Culture Studies, the “Franco Media” degree program of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the international degree program “German-French journalism” of the Center for French Studies.

Leithold was a Slavic and German studies student at the University of Freiburg. He received his doctorate from the university in 1988. In 2001, he received the State Teaching Award from Baden-Württemberg for his multimedia teaching program, “Literature and Film: Effi Briest.” He then continued to be active as a lecturer in the subject areas of film and digital journalism among other subjects. Leithold initiated the founding of uni.tv, the University of Freiburg’s student television station, three years later. After 2010, he also took on directing the university’s radio station and the editorial offices of the student newsletter. Leithold then continued to merge three editorial offices for journalist training into one called uniCROSS in 2014. Since then, the students have been working trans-medially and implemented a broad range of media practice projects. Together with the theologian Prof. Dr. Magnus Striet of the Chair of Fundamental Theology and Philosophical Anthropology, Leithold also set up and expanded the Film and Religion Section. Since 2015, he has been the Deputy Director of Freiburg's University Library.

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Media Center