Virginia Richter is Rector of the University of Bern, Professor of Modern English Literature, and a board member of the Marcel Benoist Foundation.
She studied English, Comparative and German Literature at the University of Munich, and also obtained there her PhD in Comparative Literature and her habilitation in English and Comparative Literature. For her transdisciplinary research she was awarded the "Therese von Bayern Prize". She was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Leeds and the University of Edinburgh, as well as a Visiting Professor at the University of Göttingen and the University of Munich.
Her leadership experience includes service as Vice Rector International and Academic Careers, Head of the Department of English, President of the Institute of Advanced Study (now Walter Benjamin Kolleg), and Vice Dean and Dean of the Humanities at the University of Bern; she was also President of the Forum for University and Society and Vice President of the Swiss Association of University Teachers in English. Her research interests include Victorian and modernist literature and culture, literature and science, literary animal studies, and the beach in modern literature.