KWI NEWS 2/2024

+ Paul Buckermann is a sociologist whose research and teaching focusses on art, politics, and science. He received his PhD from the University of Lucerne. He has held teaching and research positions at universities in Basel, Lucerne, Bielefeld, Zurich, Vienna, and Paderborn and has been at the University of Heidelberg since 2020. In the winter term 2023/2024, he served as a deputy chair for political sociology at the Max-Weber-Institute of Sociology in Heidelberg. As the Thyssen@KWI Fellow, he will be working on a project entitled “What is Art Good For? Multiple Justifications in Boundary Work for the Arts”.

+ Anca Mandru is a research fellow at the University of Birmingham and part of the project “The Liminality of Failing Democracy: East Central Europe During the Interwar Slump”. She received her PhD in Eastern European history in 2019 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a KWI International Fellow, she will work on her book project, provisionally entitled Fiction as History: Literature and the Making of a Leftist Culture in Romania (1880–1939). Her research explores the relationship between literature, history, and politics, examining the interplay between literary traditions and political cultures.

+ Hannah Richter is a lecturer in politics at the University of Sussex, where she researches and teaches contemporary critical political thought. She received her PhD from the University of Kent in 2019. Hannah’s research explores how postfoundational philosophy can help us understand and formulate responses to the practical challenges contemporary democracies face. As a KWI International Fellow, she will continue her research on post-truth populism. Her project comparatively explores the political ideologies of key conspiracies that shaped 20th and 21st century democratic politics to gain insight to the distinct logic of contemporary conspiratorial populism.

+ Minwoo Jung is an assistant professor of sociology, women’s studies, and gender studies at Loyola University Chicago. He is a sociologist whose work centres on gender, sexuality, race, and empire, with an emphasis on political activism and knowledge production. His research is situated at the intersection of the sociology of gender and sexualities, political sociology, and global and transnational sociology. As a KWI International Fellow, he will work on his first book project, which examines the conditions and consequences of sexuality politics in Asia from a comparative perspective.

+ Annette Schöneck studied history and German literature in Freiburg and Halifax. After completing her doctorate, her interest in knowledge transfer and its impact on society first led her to the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, then to the University of Cologne’s Start-up Center, and to the Cooperation Service at Leuphana University Lüneburg. At the Rhine Ruhr Center for Science Communication Research, she will be working on The Living Handbook of Science Communication and Science Studies.

+ Ferenc Hammer has been an associate professor in the Media and Communications Department at ELTE University in Budapest since 1997. His teaching areas, research fields, and project topics comprise disinformation, media representations of inequalities and conflict, cultural history areas such as everyday life in Communism, or the sociology of consumption. He has worked as a scholar in the UK, USA, and Germany. His most recent work addresses certain dimensions of silencing, self-censorship, and intimidation in academia. This approach involves a plan for implementing a mentoring system designed for scholars at risk, which he will work on as a KWI International Fellow. 

+ Bojan Baća is a political and cultural sociologist whose research primarily focusses on civil society, social movements, and contentious politics. After receiving his PhD from York University in 2018, he held fellowships at the University of Graz, Charles University, Heidelberg University, and most recently at the University of Gothenburg. He is currently a research associate at the University of Montenegro. As a KWI International Fellow, Bojan will concentrate on developing a research grant proposal centred on epistemic practices and evidentiary activism through which mistrust, scepticism, and denial are translated into conspiracist counter-knowledge.

For the past two semesters, KWI has been tracing pedular motions of More or Less as a signature of our present. Colleagues and guests explored related phenomena from various perspectives in the humanities and social sciences, in a wide array of events. If you missed out or wish to watch again, please visit the KWI YouTube channel: here you will find recordings of several events, for example the recent evening with Ewald Frie and Steffen Mau.

Städte auf dem Weg zur Nachhaltigkeit. Ethnographische Einblicke und Analysen by Britta Acksel

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Liebe ohne Ende. Liebesbiographische Erzählungen vom Leben by Johanna L. Dege, Jo Reichertz, and Andrea Kleeberg-Niepage 

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“Das Fotobuch als Rechteck” by Anja Schürmann in Size Matters. Größe in der Fotografie

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The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain by Béquer Seguín

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