
Contact Information
Foreign Languages Building
707 S. Matthews Ave.
Urbana IL, 61801
Biography
Joseph Medley (he/him) is a non-traditional student studying German literature at the University of Illinois. Before earning his undergraduate, Joseph was an active-duty, non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force in charge of a data-analysis shop. After leaving the military, he studied German, French, biology, and chemistry at the University of New Mexico. His German, undergraduate thesis explored conformity and subservience in Wilhelmine Germany through Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan, serialized before the first World War and fully published in 1918, after the war.
Before graduate school, Joseph spent six years as a cave geomicrobiologist responsible for field work, lab work, electron microscopy, and bioinformatics under Dr. Diana Northup at the University of New Mexico. He focused on the astrobiological implications of cave speleothems as potential biosignatures for Martian rovers, effects of wildfires on cave ecologies, and White-Nose Syndrome (a fungal disease devastating bat populations). This research has allowed him to collaborate with German scientists out of Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Technische Hochschule Nürnberg, in the field, deep underground, on the island of Hawaiʻi.
Joseph’s background has led him to believe that the humanities have a lot to teach us about what we think we know about fields, like medicine, steeped heavily in the natural sciences. The 18th century is especially interesting in that it was both a time of rapid industrial and scientific innovation and also a time characterized by a growing separation of the arts and sciences within academia – something made especially interesting in the modern era as we see researchers slowly, albeit oftentimes reluctantly, realizing the absolute necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Research Interests
Medicine, science, and technology
18th and 19th century literature
Romanticism
Enlightenment
Caves and mines
Education
University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign
MA – German, 2024
University of New Mexico
BA – German & French, 2019
BS – Biology & Chemistry, 2019
Community College of the Air Force
AAS – Maintenance Production Management, 2012
Grants
2025 - Professor Henri Stegemeier Travel Award, UIUC German Department
2025 - University Block-Grant Fellowship, UIUC-German award towards dissertation
2018 - Cearley Undergraduate Grant-In-Aid Award, New Mexico Geological Society
2017 - New Mexico Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Scholarship
Awards and Honors
2024 - Teachers Ranked “Excellent” by Students, “outstanding” rating, spring semester, UIUC
2023 - Teachers Ranked “Excellent” by Students, fall semester, UIUC
2024 - John A. Howard and James Marchand Award, UIUC German Department
2022 - Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Arts, University of Illinois
Courses Taught
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- GER 101 - Beginning German I
- GER 102 - Beginning German II
- GER 103 - Intermediate German I
Recent Publications
Medley, J. J., Hathaway, J. J. M., Spilde, M. N., & Northup, D. E. (2024). Looking for Microbial Biosignatures in All the Right Places: Clues for Identifying Extraterrestrial Life in Lava Tubes. Applied Sciences, 14(15), 6500. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14156500
Kögel, M.; Pflitsch, A.; Northup, D.E.; Carsten, D.; Medley, J.J.; Mansheim; T.; Killing, T.; Buschbacher, M.; Angerer, H.; Falkner, J.; Kynatidis, A.; Ott, V.; Regler, S. (2022). Combination of close-range and aerial photogrammetry with terrestrial laser scanning to answer microbiological and climatological questions in connection with lava caves. Applied Geomatics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12518-022-00459-7
Prescott, R.D.; Zamkovaya, T.; Donachie, S.P.; Northup, D.E.; Medley, J.J.; Monslave, N.; Saw, J.H.; Chain, P.S.G.; Decho, A.W.; Boston, P.J. (2022). Islands within islands: bacterial phylogenetic structure and consortia in Hawaiian lava caves and fumaroles. Frontiers in Microbiology, Extreme Microbiology Section. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.934708