Lexia’s Academic Director in Berlin, Carol Scherer, graduated from the University of Michigan’s Residential College in Ann Arbor with a dual major in Western European Studies and with highest honors in German. As an undergraduate she participated in the Junior Year in Freiburg program, at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg.  With a focus on the interplay of culture and politics, she went on to complete her M.A. in European intellectual history at the University of Chicago.

She has taught in the fields of cultural studies, feminist theory, and the history and memory of the Holocaust at the University of Chicago and the Uniwersytet Jagiellonski in Krakow. Scholarships and awards include a two-year DAAD dissertation research grant, The Van Holst Prize in History from the University of Chicago, and a fellowship to the Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. Her dissertation focuses on the cultural politics of municipal authorities, museums and collecting, and voluntary associations in late nineteenth century Frankfurt am Main.

As Lexia's Academic Director in Berlin, she was inspired by Documenta11 and Berlin's vibrant arts community to create a new, parallel program in visual culture. In addition to the scholars and resources of Lexia's track in German Cultural Studies, students now have the opportunity to work with the city's outstanding museum and library collections, study the changing representations of power in the architecture of Berlin as capital, and explore contemporary art in galleries and the studios of international artists.