Heike Paul is an internationally renowned cultural scientist specializing in the field of affect studies. Her research in the field of cultural studies focuses primarily on research into the forms and functions of sentimentality(Global Sentimentality Project) and implicit knowledge. Since the beginning of her academic career, she has focused on diversity and gender in teaching, research and administration.

From 1987 to 1994, she studied American Studies, Political Science and English at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main and at the University of Washington, Seattle (DAAD scholarship). After completing her master's degree, she completed her doctorate in the DFG Research Training Group "Geschlechterdifferenz und Literatur" at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and then worked as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig, where she habilitated in 2004. In the same year, she was appointed to the Chair of American Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). In Erlangen, she was deputy speaker of the DFG Research Training Group "Kulturhermeneutik im Zeichen von Differenz und Transdifferenz" and speaker of the DFG Research Training Group "Präsenz und implizites Wissen".

Numerous fellowships and visiting professorships have taken her to Harvard University as a DAAD postdoc, to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as a fellow, to Dartmouth College as a visiting professor ("Harris Distinguished Visiting Professor"), to Keele University and the University of Zurich as a visiting lecturer, and to the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as a visiting scholar. In 2018, she gave the Kantorowicz Lecture in Political Language in Frankfurt on the topic of "Staatsbürgersentimentalismus, American Style".

Her most important publications include the monographs Kulturkontakt und Racial Presences: Afroamerikaner und die deutsche Amerika-Literatur, 1815-1914 (2005) and The Myths That Made America (2014) as well as the co-editorials Pirates, Drifters, Fugitives: Figures of Mobility in the U.S. and Beyond (2012), Critical Regionalism (2016) and The Comeback of Populism: Transatlantic Perspectives (2019).

Heike Paul is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Bavarian American Academy, for which she is involved as a transatlantic networker, among other things. In 2018, she was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation.