DAAD long term Lecturer and Lektors
Since 2025, Dr Simon Halama has been teaching as a DAAD lecturer at the School for Archaeology and Tourism at the University of Jordan in Amman. He studied Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology, Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Islamic Studies at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and Leiden University, and received his doctorate in Freiburg in 2013 with a dissertation on Iron Age Palaces in Western Syria and Lebanon (published 2018 as Eisenzeitliche Paläste in der nördlichen Levante. Repräsentation von Herrschaft mit architektonischen Mitteln). He taught as a research assistant in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and from 2016 to 2022 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU), where he also held various positions as a programme coordinator. His research focuses on topics related to architecture, urbanism and social organisation in Ancient Near Eastern societies, and he conducted field research in the suburb of Sirkeli Höyük (Turkey) between 2017 and 2022. Since 2021, he has been co-director of the Wadi Rajib Archaeological Project, which investigates archaeological sites in Wadi Rajib in northern Jordan. In addition to his research, he is active as a lecturer and writing advisor in the field of academic writing and has co-initiated and supported several international projects and programmes for the further training of students and lecturers in academic writing and in digital techniques for archaeology and cultural heritage research.
Silvie Zeller has been a DAAD lecturer at the German Jordanian University (GJU) since 2025. Her teaching and academic work focus on technical and professional languages, academic and workplace communication, and the teaching of German as a foreign language. Before taking up her current position, she worked as a lecturer in German as a foreign language at the GJU’s German Language Center, where she was involved in academic language testing and the development of teaching and learning materials. She previously taught at the University of Jordan and gained professional experience in the private sector in Berlin. Her academic background is in linguistics (MSc, University of Edinburgh) and conference interpreting (MA, Heidelberg University). Her areas of specialization include technical and professional language, academic language testing, formal syntax, cognitive linguistics, and materials development in German as a foreign language.
Dr. Ortrun Hanna has been a DAAD Lecturer at the School of Applied Humanities and Social Sciences at the German Jordanian University (GJU) in Amman/Madaba since September 2024. She has many years of experience in teaching German as a foreign language and in the master’s training of GFL teachers and has managed corresponding institutions in Germany and abroad. In 1999 she received her doctor’s degree at the University of Dortmund in linguistics on the topic of university communication in mechanical engineering. She was a research assistant at the University of Dortmund, a GFL teacher at the preparatory college of the ÖSW in Bochum, DAAD Lecturer at the University of Helwan (Egypt), Director of the Language and Cultural Centre of the German University in Cairo (GUC), Head of the Department of German as a Foreign Language as well as the Language Centre at TU Braunschweig, Dean of the School of Languages at the German Jordanian University in Jordan and DAAD Lecturer at the German Department of the Faculty of Education and at the Centre of Excellence for Study and Research in German and Arabic as a Foreign Language (EZ-DAAF) at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Her areas of specialty include pragmatics, technical and scientific language as well as didactics and methodology of German as a foreign language.
Anna Kloska has been working since September 2019 as a DAAD Lecturer at the Department of German Language at the Salahaddin University in Erbil, Irak.
In 2021 she completed her Masters’s Degree (M.A.) in German Language and Literature.
Ms. Kloska then studied German as a Foreign Language for the purpose of teaching at the Ruhr-University of Bochum until 2003.
From 2003 till 2008 she was teaching German as a Foreign Language in Germany and since 2008 abroad, in Jordan and India.
From 2013 till 2015 Ms. Kloska was DAAD Lecturer in Algeria, Oran and between 2016 – 2019 at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan, supporting during that time the work at the German Department of the Salahaddin University Erbil, Irak.
Markus Schmitz is a comparativist trained in Middle Eastern Studies and English Literary and Cultural Studies. Before he joined German Jordanian University’s School of Applied Humanities and Social Sciences as Associate Professor and DAAD Long-term Lecturer he was Senior Lecturer at Münster University, Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, and DAAD Visiting Professor and Academic Consultant at Lebanese University’s Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences in Beirut. His research revolves around (Anglophone) Arab Representations, Relational Diasporic Formations, Theories of Cross-Cultural Comparison, Forced Migration and Border Regimes. Publications include Kulturkritik ohne Zentrum: Edward W. Said und die Kontrapunkte kritischer Dekolonisation (2008), Postcolonial Translocations: Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking (Ed. 2013) and Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations (2020). His current research project is a comparative study on Middle Eastern refugee imaginaries.
