Julia Boll currently covers the professorship of British and Anglophone Literature and Culture at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She studied English and German literature and political science at the University of Bremen and John Moore's University Liverpool, holds a doctorate in English literature and in drama from the University of Edinburgh, and a habilitation from the University of Konstanz.

She taught literature and theatre at the University of Edinburgh for five years, was director of the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School , and worked for the Edinburgh Review. In 2013, she joined the University of Konstanz as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow to research the representation of the bare life on stage, a project for which, as PI, she secured funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). From 2020 to 2022, she was Associate Professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) for British Studies at the University of Hamburg. From 2023-2024, she covered an akademische Oberratsstelle at the University of Bielefeld.

She is a co-convener of the International Federation for Theatre Research's political performances working group, a founding member and co-convenor of the Humanities Pedagogy Workshop Series (Univ. of Konstanz, UC Dublin, Manchester Met. Univ.), a founding member of the Scottish Literature and Culture Network (https://scotlitcult.blogspot.com/), and was on the Board of the German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE) for six years. Her work is located in the area of ethics, politics, literature and theatre. Her monograph "The New War Plays" was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Her second book, "Scapegoats, Devils, Outlaws, Witches: Bare Life's Lives on the Medieval, Early Modern, and Contemporary Stage", is under review.