Maria Kraxenberger studied Comparative Literature at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She completed her doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin with an empirical dissertation titled “On Sound-Emotion Associations in Poetry.” She conducted research at Stanford University (2013–2014), at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (2014–2018), and at the University of Basel (2019). From 2020 to 2025, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Literary Studies at the University of Stuttgart. She was appointed Junior Professor of Interdisciplinary English Studies at the Department of English at the University of Mannheim, a position she held until 2026. Since February 2026, she has been a member of the academic staff at the Gutenberg Institute for World Literature and Written Media, where she is part of the Department of Book Studies.