Thorsten Carstensen is Lecturer of German at the University of Amsterdam. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2012 and taught at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis before joining the UvA in 2023. As both a teacher and scholar, Thorsten engages with critiques of modernity, with a focus on German and Austrian literature from the late nineteenth century to the present. His current research projects explore the life reform movement around 1900 and the role of architecture in German literature. 

Thorsten is the author of Romanisches Erzählen: Peter Handke und die epische Tradition (Wallstein, 2013) and co-editor of Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture (Brill, 2025). He is co-editor of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, and he serves on the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Austrian Studies, Acta Neophilologica, Colloquia Germanica Steninensia, Verbum et Lingua: Didáctica, lengua y cultura, Ars Aeterna, Studia Iberica et Americana.