Galin Tihanov is a Bulgarian literary scholar and academic specialising in comparative literature, intellectual history and literary theory. He is the George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London, where he has also served as dean for research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Career
Tihanov was an assistant professor of Bulgarian literature at Sofia University from 1992 to 1993. From 1997 to 2000, he was a junior research fellow in Russian and German intellectual history at Merton College, Oxford.
In 2000, Tihanov joined Lancaster University as a lecturer in European studies. He became reader in comparative literature and intellectual history in 2002, and was appointed professor of comparative literature in 2003.
Tihanov moved to the University of Manchester in 2007 as professor of comparative literature and intellectual history. He was a founding co-director of the university's Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures
In 2011, Tihanov joined Queen Mary University of London as the first holder of the George Steiner Professorship of Comparative Literature. He became dean for research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2024 and serves as an ex officio member of the university senate. Tihanov has also taught at the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University.
Honors Tihanov was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2012. The same year, he received the Efim Etkind Prize from the European University at Saint Petersburg for A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond and its Russian-language edition, Istoriia russkoi literaturnoi kritiki: sovetskaia i postsovetskaia epokhi. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2021.
References