Doctoral Candidate Layla Marie Koch

Layla Koch (she/her) is a doctoral candidate under the supervision of Jan Stievermann and a member of the Research Training Group ''Authority and Trust in American Culture, Society, History, and Politics'' at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. In her Ph.D. project, she examines the roles of American children in the U.S. foreign missions movement, 1810-66. She is further interested in shifting understandings of childhood and how these intersected with missions and broader American religious history. Layla received her M.A. and B.A. from the University of Heidelberg. She also studied at Yale Divinity School, USA, and Uppsala Universitet, Sweden. Layla's work has been supported by the German Association of American Studies, German Fulbright Commission, and the Baden-Württemberg Foundation.