Ina Serif studied History, German and Italian in Freiburg i. Br. (D) and Rome (I). She received her PhD from the University of Freiburg in 2018 with a thesis on the reception of urban historiography, taking the late medieval chronicle of Jakob Twinger von Königshofen as a case study. (Reviews in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 144/3 (2022), 490-493; Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 72 (2022), 278f.; Historische Zeitschrift 314/3 (2022), 767f.; Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 48 (2021), 760f.; Le Moyen Âge 2022/2 (CXXVIII), 557f.; Archiv für hessische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 79 (2021), 366-386)

Besides working with premodern sources she is interested in ways of disseminating and preservating knowledge, and she has a focus on digital history, both in research and in teaching. Currently she is using a quantitative approach to printed book advertisements in an early modern newspaper, falling back on qualitative methods if in panic. She is a member of the networks Historische Grundwissenschaften, Historische Wissens- und Gebrauchsliteratur and Offenes Mittlelalter, of the DHd working group Zeitungen und Zeitschriften and an associated member of the SNF project «Printed Markets».

She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel since 2017, since 2019 at the chair of Renaissance and Early Modern History, since August 2021 as assistant for Premodern and Digital History.