Ralph Grunewald is an associate professor in the Department of English and the Center for Law, Society & Justice. He is a German-trained lawyer and earned a Ph.D. in Criminal Law and Criminology from the University of Mainz. He then completed the Master of Laws (LL.M.) program at the UW–Madison Law School, where he worked with the Wisconsin Innocence Project. His research addresses questions of comparative legal narratology and criminal law. In his new book, Narratives of Guilt and Innocence (NYU Press, 2023), he analyzes the function of storytelling in the American and German criminal justice systems and argues that processes of narrativization are a contributing factor in wrongful convictions. In 2017, Professor Grunewald received the William H. Kiekhofer Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2022 became a Mellon-Morgridge Professor of the Humanities.
A word from Dean Eric M. Wilcots:
Professor Grunewald has explored fundamental questions about the interconnections of truth, guilt and justice in multiple justice systems. He is an extraordinary instructor who regularly teaches large lecture courses yet manages to offer students a personalized experience by addressing nearly all of them by name.