Emeritus Professor Dennis Tate retired from the University in 2008 after 30 years in ESML, although he retains close links with colleagues at Bath and elsewhere. He joined the Department in 1978 as a lecturer in German Studies. He became a professor in 1999 and was Head of Department between 2000 and 2003. Dennis was born in Belfast in 1946. He took his BA in German and French at Trinity College, Dublin, then spent a year in Canada at McMaster University taking an MA in contemporary German Studies before moving to the University of Warwick, where he wrote a PhD in what was then the new research field of East German literature. Before coming to Bath he taught for seven years at the University of Ulster.

His main publications have been in the field of East German culture during the lifetime of the German Democratic Republic and since German unification. They include The East German Novel (1984), Franz Fhmann: Innovation and Authenticity (1995) and Shifting Perspectives: East German Autobiographical Narratives before and after the end of the GDR (2007). He has edited volumes on the authors Gnter de Bruyn (1999) and Heiner Mller (2000), as well as on a range of comparative cultural topics. He was consultant editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture (1999).

Dennis has regularly taught German foundation courses on post-1945 culture and politics, and options on Berlin and 'Culture and Politics in the GDR'. On the European Studies side he has contributed to the second-year option Border Crossings and coordinated the final-year European option 'Politically Committed European Culture: the End of an Era?'. He has contributed to German language teaching at undergraduate and MA level as well as to the MA in European Cinema Studies. He has also regularly supervised thesis-work done by MA and PhD students.

His research work has been supported externally by the British Academy, the DAAD and the AHRC. He was a member of the 2001 RAE panel for European Studies and acted as a peer reviewer for the AHRC between 2004 and 2008. He has served as external examiner/consultant at many universities in the UK, Ireland and Germany.