Carolin Emcke was born in 1967. She studied philosophy, politics and history in London, Frankfurt am Main and Harvard and did her doctorate in philosophy on the concept of "collective identities". From 1998 to 2006, she was an editor at "Der Spiegel" and travelled as a foreign editor to many crisis areas (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kosovo, Iraq, Colombia, Lebanon, etc.).

In 2003/2004 Carolin Emcke was Visiting Lecturer for Political Theory at Yale University with seminars on "Theories of Violence" and "Witnessing War Crimes".

Since the 2004/2005 season, she has been the moderator of the monthly discussion event "Streitraum" at the Schaubühne Berlin. At the Hamburg Media School she has been advisor to the journalism course since 2006/2007. Since 2007 Carolin Emcke has been working as a freelance international reporter, among others for the Zeit-Magazin.

For her book "Von den Kriegen" (Of the Wars) she was awarded the prize "Das politische Buch" (The Political Book) by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2005 and the sponsorship prize of the Ernst Bloch Prize in 2006. For her essay "Stumme Gewalt" (Silent Violence), published in the ZEIT magazine LEBEN, she received the Theodor Wolff Prize in 2008.

Carolin Emcke lives in Berlin.

Main areas of work:

• Features and essays from war and crisis zones (Iraq, Afghanistan, West Bank, Lebanon, Colombia, Gaza Strip, Pakistan...)
• Theoretical work on phenomenology of violence, witnessing, collective identities, globalisation, torture, iconography of violence, image memory and politics, Shoah and politics of memory, photography