Susanne Marten-Finnis is a Professor of Applied Linguistics (Emerita) at the University of Portsmouth. In her publications, Susanne explores the nexus between Jewish literary activities and European thought. Her focus is on the Jewish textual tradition in the European countries of former Jewish residency and migration. Exemplary in this respect are her pioneering studies on the transformative character of Jewish periodicals in Vilna, Czernovitz and Berlin. Susanne currently works on an annotated bibliography of the historical German-Jewish press (1670-1943).

Her second research strand is the cultural production of Russia Abroad during the first third of the twentieth century, including art publishing, Russian Orientalism and heterotopias in Central Asia. Her academic career includes positions at Queens University Belfast and the University of Bremen, besides visiting positions at the Technical University Berlin, the Belarusian State University Minsk, the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context at the University of Heidelberg and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

A more recent research project is about geopolitics in the historical borderlands of Europe during a period of shifting power balance in Oriental trade. Recognizing the geographical nature of sixteenth-century Poland and the strategic relevance of her borderlands, the project scrutinises the recruitment campaign of Sigismund III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, towards Sephardic Jewish resettlement in Zamość – a Renaissance-style city, founded in 1580. In addition, the project revisits some missed opportunities, such as the Hadiach Treaty of 1658, and the stabilizing role of Turkey in the imperial and post-imperial space between the Balkan and the Baltic. Susanne has recently secured a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellowship to complete her research and prepare the results for publication.