Christina Oesterheld studied Indology at the Humboldt University, Berlin, where she worked as a research assistant after finishing her studies. She did her Ph.D. on the contemporary Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder. Since 1990 she has been teaching Urdu and Hindi at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. She has done research on modern Urdu literature and translated Urdu short stories and poetry into German.
