Biographie

Dimiter Daphinoff studied English and German Literatures at the Universities of Berne, Munich and St Andrews. He received his PhD on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra from the University of Berne in 1978, and went on a Postdoctoral Scholarship to Yale University in 1979 where he worked with Martin Price, Ronald Paulson and J. Hillis Miller. In 1983 he submitted his Habilitationsschrift on Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa to the University of Berne (publ. 1986) and was awarded a venia legendi in Modern English Literature. 

He taught as a Privatdozent and Lecturer at the University of Berne from 1983 until 1987. In 1984 he was appointed Professor of English Literature at the University of Fribourg. Dimiter Daphinoff was a Guest Professor at the Universities of Lausanne and Zürich. He was the Founding Director of the Institute of Comparative Literature at Fribourg (1999-2002) and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Letters (2003-2005). From 2005 until 2009 he served as Head of the Department of English and Slavonic Studies. In 2010 he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of St Andrews.

Dimiter Daphinoff has published on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, on Samuel Richardson and the 18th-century novel, on Byron, and on contemporary drama and fiction. His work in progress includes a book-length study on Caroline drama, and articles on Byron, turn-of-the-century dystopias, Vladimir Nabokov, and on the literature of terrorism.​