The heart of the Zukunftskolleg
The Zukunftskolleg is a place for people from different departments to meet and talk about their research. Fellows are encouraged to look outside the box and explore the zone between the disciplines. The Jour fixe is the weekly session for the fellows and Senior Fellows, where they discuss the progress of their work, present results, share and encounter questions from other disciplines and explore the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Weekly Jour fixe sessions take place during the semester on Tuesdays from 15:15 to 16:30. Attendance on invitation only.
Jour fixe in the 2021/22 winter semester
26.10.2021
“Welcome to the 2021/2022 winter semester”
The current members of the Executive Committee as well as new postdoctoral and research fellows were introduced to the Zukunftskolleg community, and the ZUKOnnect and Herz Fellows were welcomed.
02.11.2021
Babu Thaliath (Senior Fellow / Department of Philosophy / School of Language, Literature & Culture Studies, Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India)
“The Epistemic-Structural Intuition”
The concept of structural intuition was developed by the renowned art historian Martin Kemp in twenty-five short articles that appeared in the journal Nature between 1997 and 2000. In the introduction to his work Visualizations. The nature book of art and science, in which these articles are collected and edited, Kemp explains the principle of structural intuition as the infallible resonance that exists between internally intuitive and externally phenomenal structures. In his talk, Babu Thaliath endeavoured to demonstrate how the structural intuitions in the context of early modern mathematical and material sciences prove to be compositional in that they unify mathematical formality with mechanical and material phenomenality. The compositional nature of structural intuition points to its epistemological potential, based on which this doctrine can be extended to epistemic-structural intuition and, as such, substantiated as the characteristic trait of axiomatic intuitions in early modern sciences.
09.11.2021
Joint session with the Martin Buber Society (MBS) of Fellows from Jerusalem/Israel
“Kick-off Meeting Martin Buber – Zukunftskolleg Symposium 2022/23”
In the past, the fellows from the MBS and the Zukunftskolleg have come together and discussed themes such as “forgetting”, “mobility” or “un/certainty”, which has led to book or blog publications. The themes were always inspired by a bottom-up approach, and thus the idea of the Jour fixe was to pursue this path together once more and to meet up in order to identify new topics of joint interest. In this virtual kick-off meeting on 9 November 2021, the two fellow communities met, got to know each other and brainstormed in smaller groups about new, inspiring themes.
16.11.2021
Prerna Nadathur (Postdoctoral Fellow / Department of Linguistics)
“Talking about causation: cause, make, and causal intentions”
(1) a. Stravinsky caused the audience to riot.
b. Stravinsky made the audience riot.
c. Stravinsky had the audience riot.
d. Stravinsky got the audience to riot.
Each of the periphrastic causative verbs in (1) conveys that Stravinsky played a role in bringing the riot about. However, the claims are not simply paraphrases of one another, but are understood to describe different kinds of causal situations: (1b), for instance, suggests that Stravinsky exerted some kind of force over his audience, while (1c) might indicate that he took a more hands-off ‘directorial’ role, and so on.
Traditional approaches to causal language take these verbs to be unified by making reference to a (cognitively basic) relation of causal dependence, typically called cause (Dowty 1979). As a lexical atom (or basic unit of meaning), cause is often identified with the meaning of the English verb cause and assumed to describe a counterfactual relationship in which an event designated as the effect would have been impossible in the absence of the cause. On this hypothesis, the implications specific to each of the causatives in (1b)-(1d) must follow from additional, non-causal lexical atoms which are encoded alongside cause in the meanings of these verbs: this predicts that the set of contexts in which make, have and get can be used are, respectively, subsets of the set of appropriate contexts for cause.
The linguistic data do not support this monolithic view of causal dependencies. Against the idea of a single causal primitive (cause), Nadathur argues that causal language employs an inventory of basic and contrasting causal relationships, which can be modelled as different structural configurations within a computational causal model (e.g. Shoham 1990, Pearl 2000). Nadathur develops the argument for a pluralist view of linguistic causation by focusing on a comparative analysis of make and cause, showing that intuitive (linguistic) judgements about contrasts in the appropriate use and interpretation of these verbs are best explained by a theory which establishes a basic distinction between verbs which predicate causal sufficiency of a cause for an effect (e.g. make and German lassen) and those which instead predicate causal necessity (e.g. cause). She offers definitions of these dependence relations within the framework of a Pearl-style structural equation (network) model for causal reasoning and shows how they interact with context-dependent and variable features such as (a participant’s) agency and intentions. The ways in which we talk about causation naturally reflect the cognitive representation of causation: the success of the pluralistic approach in explaining the use and interpretation of causative verbs thus suggests that causation is not conceptualized in terms of a single binary dependence relation, but instead in terms of complex networks in which individuals, intentions and events affect one another in distinct ways.
23.11.2021
ZUKOnnect and Herz Poster session
The fellows gathered in person and began with a short round of lightning talks, in which each of the ZUKOnnect and Herz Fellows presented their research topic in two minutes to the whole audience. Afterwards, the ZUKOnnect and Herz Fellows presented their posters to the audience. The poster session was opened by Giovanni Galizia, and Dorothea Debus (Vice Rector for International Affairs, Equal Opportunity and Diversity) closed the session.
Anteneh Gebrie, Department of Mathematics and Statistics:
“Incremental algorithms with acceleration techniques for hierarchical optimization problems and its applications”
David Etta, Department of Linguistics:
“Breaking Accessibility Barriers to Re-evaluate the Phonology of Bokyi”
Gabriel S. Cerqueira, Department of History and Sociology:
“Social control, hygienism and family law: transnational knowledge exchange between Brazil and the League of Nations (1919–1930)”
Ilesha Avasthi, Department of Chemistry:
“Exploring Guanosine-based Scaffold for Bioinspired Materials for ‘Mineral Plastics’”
Mahsa Mozafary, Department of Computer and Information Science:
“Various Colourings of Fractional Powers of Graph”
Neelma Ashraf, Department of Biology:
”Identification of a Novel Strong Antifungal Polyene and Identification of the Lavendamycin Biosynthetic Gene Cluster of the Rhizobacterium Streptomyces sp. BR123 Isolated from the Rhizosphere of Helianthus Annuus from Pakistan”
Norman Chivasa, Department of Politics and Public Administration:
“Hybrid Conflict Resolution in Rural Zimbabwe’s Customary Courts”
Priyanshu Goel, Department of Physics:
“Synthesis of highly efficient MOF and Perovskite composite for development of stable and efficient optoelectronic device”
30.11.2021
María Cruz Berrocal (Associated Fellow / Department of History and Sociology)
“Archaeology in the Pacific: interdisciplinary approaches to the archaeological record”
Archaeometric approaches are widely used in archaeology to better understand the archaeological record in many dimensions that go beyond the recovery and study of archaeological artifacts. In this talk, Cruz Berrocal presented some of the research questions and some of the methodological approaches that she was using, in collaboration with a broad group of researchers from different disciplines, to unravel questions of large historical consequences through small-scale analysis. She presented her main scientific concerns and a particular case study located in northern Taiwan.
07.12.2021
Alice el-Wakil (Postdoctoral Fellow / Department of Politics and Public Administration)
“Citizens as Agenda Setters in Democratic Systems”
In political and academic debates about whether referendums and initiatives should be included in democratic systems, an objection to these processes keeps coming up: voters are too incompetent or uninformed to cast their ballot on policy issues. Therefore, democrats should instead support the institutionalization of democracy through conventional representative institutions. This article revisits the normative basis for this enduring objection. It argues that the assumption on which it rests, namely that ordinary voters should be more competent or knowledgeable when casting their ballot in popular votes than in elections, is unjustified. None of the four reasons advanced in the literature – popular votes are more complex than elections; they undermine voters’ decision-making competence; they produce irreversible decisions; and they turn voters into legislators – stands up to scrutiny. Thus, unless democrats are ready to renounce elections, too, the incompetence or lack of knowledge of voters cannot serve to reject popular vote processes.
14.12.2021
Assembly of Members and “Augmented Reality”
In the first part of the Jour fixe, the Assembly of Members elected one new member to the Executive Committee (replacing Morgane Nouvian).
In the second part, Stephan Streuber (Associated Fellow / Computer and Information Science), Lorenz Assländer (Postdoctoral Researcher / Sports Science) and Alejandra Quiros (Associated Fellow / Computer and Information Science) talked about “Augmented Reality”.
Project by Stephan Streuber / Lorenz Assländer on “Augmented Reality”:
Falls in the elderly are a major problem for individuals and society. In the ageing process, sensory and motor systems deteriorate through losses in receptor density and sarcopenia, a loss in muscle mass. This also affects the balance control mechanism, leading to an increase in spontaneous sway and to changes in the feedback control mechanisms maintaining balance. We hypothesize that reliable and valid augmented visual orientation (AVO) cues improve the sensory input available to the central nervous system and thereby improve balance. The proposed project investigates whether augmenting visual orientation with additional space veridical cues projected into the field of view can improve balance and prevent falls. The basic idea of augmented visual orientation (AVO) is analogous to that of an artificial horizon in an aircraft. Technical sensors are used to extract the position of a device in gravito-inertial space, and augmented reality techniques are used to provide space veridical visual cues for a user. To the best of our knowledge, using AVO or similar techniques to improve balance has not been described in the literature and therefore may be a novel approach for fall prevention.
Project by Alejandra Quiros / Stephan Streuber / Michael Black on “Red shape, blue shape: political ideology influences the social perception of body shape”:
nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00817-7
Political elections have a profound impact on individuals and societies. Optimal voting is thought to be based on informed and deliberate decisions. Yet it has been demonstrated that the outcomes of political elections are biased by the perception of candidates’ facial features and the stereotypical traits voters attribute to these. Interestingly, political identification changes the attribution of stereotypical traits from facial features. This study explores whether the perception of body shape elicits similar effects on political trait attribution and whether these associations can be visualized. In Experiment 1, ratings of 3D body shapes were used to model the relationship between perception of 3D body shape and the attribution of political traits such as ‘Republican’, ‘Democrat’ or ‘Leader’. This made it possible to analyze and visualize the mental representations of stereotypical 3D body shapes associated with each political trait. Experiment 2 was designed to test whether political identification of the raters affected the attribution of political traits to different types of body shapes. The results show that humans attribute political traits to the same body shapes differently depending on their own political preference. These findings show that our judgements of others are influenced by their body shape and our own political views. Such judgements have potential political and societal implications.
21.12.2021
Mirjam Lücking (Research Visit Fellow / Social Anthropology; Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Israel)
“Not only at Christmas: Souvenirs from Bethlehem in Indonesia’s Cosmopolitan Religious Identities”
Considering that Israel and Indonesia share no diplomatic relations, it is remarkable that thousands of Indonesians visit Israel and the West Bank (Occupied Palestinian Territory) each year in guided religious package tours.
Since the 1980s, members of Indonesia’s Christian minority have travelled in so-called Holy Land pilgrimages to Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Today, Jerusalem is also a bestseller on the Muslim market, in addition to the hajj and umrah to Mecca. Beyond tendencies to adopt narratives about the Israel-Palestine conflict as a surrogate conflict in inter- and intra-religious relations, Muslim and Christian Indonesian pilgrims share similar preferences when it comes to mundane matters during their religious journeys, for instance regarding eating preferences, photos and social media, or shopping.
When it comes to purchasing souvenirs and gifts, Christian as well as Muslim Indonesian pilgrims share a similar taste. Moreover, their ideas of engaging with Palestinians and Israelis through shopping and charity continued even during the pandemic when no travel was possible. Bethlehem is a particularly interesting connecting point in this context, as it is considered one of the most important Palestinian cities among Indonesian Muslims while Indonesian Christians value it as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Based on ethnographic research in Israel, Palestine and Indonesia as well as online research, Miriam Lücking showed how people, gifts, souvenirs and stories travel between Indonesia and Bethlehem. The transnational trade with souvenirs and the narratives that accompany them manifest continuities in Indonesian religious identities and customs, but they also mark new trends of cosmopolitan religious identities and may inspire a more nuanced understanding of conflict and cooperation in the Middle East.
11.01.2022
Visit by Rector Katharina Holzinger
The Zukunftskolleg extended an invitation to the first Jour fixe in 2022 on Tuesday, 11 January, to which Katharina Holzinger, Rector of the University of Konstanz, was also invited. In the first part, there were 10 short presentations / lightning talks by fellows, representing the wide spectrum of projects and programmes that the ZuKo offers.
Ariane Bertogg (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology):
“Growing wings. Becoming independent as a researcher”
Susanne Wißhak (Associated Fellow / Economics):
“Sustainable learning in organizations”
Valeria Wegh Weis (Research Fellow / Literature & Law):
“Towards a victim-driven approach. To confront state crimes and deal with their legacy”
Gruia Badescu (Research Fellow & Intersectoral Project / History and Sociology):
“Beirut – Sarajevo Intersections: Architectural reconstruction and reshaping urban imaginaries after war”
Abena Yalley (Postdoctoral Fellow & Transdepartmental Collaborative Teaching / Literature & Politics and Public Administration):
“The legacy of violence in pandemic times: Global health challenges and gender dynamics” – cooperation with Liliana Abreu (Politics and Public Administration) and Anke Koebach (Psychology)
Norman Chivasa (Herz Fellow / Law):
“Hybrid conflict resolution in rural Zimbabwe’s customary courts”
Nihan Toprakkiran (Postdoctoral Fellow / Politics and Public Administration):
“Discrimination, Political Representation and Populism: Evidence from a Survey Experiment”
Jennifer Randerath (Research Fellow & Intersectoral Project / Psychology):
“Transfer from fundamental research at the university to applied neurorehabilitation in clinical settings”
Neelma Ashraf (ZUKOnnect Fellow / Biology):
“My research for antimicrobial compounds production and ZUKOnnect Fellowship”
In the second part, there was an opportunity to put questions to the rector and engage in an open dialogue with her.
18.01.2022
Gabriella Gall (Postdoctoral Fellow / Department of Biology)
“Exploring the Effect of Early Experience on Individual Vocal Flexibility and Group Functioning”
To maintain the benefits of group living, many animals need to make group decisions and coordinate their actions oftentimes using vocal signals to mediate these processes. The production and appropriate use of vocal signals develops over an individual’s lifetime and is refined by experience. For instance, the soundscape experienced early in life can have profound effects on an individual’s vocal behaviour, which in turn affects their reproductive success. During her fellowship, Gabriella Gall is investigating the use of vocal signals to coordinate group movement and activity in two systems. She explores mechanisms using aviary-enclosed flocks of domestic chicks (Gallus gallus), which will permit her to manipulate critical aspects of their developmental, social and physical environment in order to conduct a series of controlled experiments. She explores fitness consequences of ecologically relevant behaviours in free-living groups of pheasants (Phasianus colchicus), which exhibit marked changes in group structure throughout the year. Here, she gave an overview of her research plans and presented the experiments on domestic chicken chicks, conducted since the start of her fellowship in May 2021, and some (not yet quantified) insights from these experiments.
25.01.2022
Jennifer Randerath (Research Fellow / Department of Psychology)
“Motor Cognition and Neurorehabilitation”
Mental processes support the selection, preparation and production of actions. The ability, called motor cognition, is needed when performing skilled movements in order to interact with our environment. Randerath used motor cognitive functions related to deciding how to grasp a handle or how to cross a street or while gesturing to communicate “Goodbye”. Motor cognitive performance can change during healthy ageing. In addition, significant impairments can occur due to stroke or dementia, for example, typically resulting in a syndrome called limb apraxia. Using a translational approach from fundamental to applied research in neurorehabilitation, she conducted three different lines of studies on movement selection, affordance-based judgements as well as on tool use. In this talk, she summarized her main findings, which illustrate the complexity and importance of preserved motor cognitive functions. The Motor Cognition and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory started work in 2014/2015. Looking back on seven years at the Zukunftskolleg with fondness, the presentation certainly included some personal anecdotes.
01.02.2022
Daniela Rößler (Postdoctoral Fellow / Department of Biology)
“Hungry Eyes: An Experimental Framework Testing Eye Camouflage in Active Predators”
Effective camouflage can substantially increase survival in prey animals by concealing them from predators. But do predators also use camouflage to reduce detection by prey? Eyes can be a limiting factor in camouflage because they are highly conspicuous and stand out from the rest of an animal’s body. They can convey information, such as the position of an animal’s head or where it is looking. Many species exploit the salient nature of eyes by displaying exaggerated eye spots or “fake eyes”, such as those on butterfly wings, to deter predators. Equally widespread are distinct facial markings such as dark stripes which seemingly conceal or disrupt the eyes. To date, research in this area has focused on the function of eye camouflage from an anti-predator, but not from a predator perspective. Jumping spiders are superb predators with excellent vision. Numerous species of jumping spiders exhibit striking eye masking patterns. In a recent study, Rößler has shown that jumping spiders use eyes as important cues in the recognition of other (predatory) jumping spiders. Being both highly visual prey and predators with rich cognitive abilities, they offer a unique dual model system. In this seminar, she first presented her experimental paradigm that allows her to robustly test the response of jumping spiders to predators. She outlined her ZuKo project plan to test how different eye masking patterns influence predator recognition and how eye masks affect foraging success. She illustrated how 3D printing technology as well as novel 3D video tracking methods can be applied to quantify natural behaviour in these charismatic animals.
08.02.2022
Assembly of Members
In the first part, the Assembly of Members elected one new member to the Executive Committee (replacing Nihan Toprakkiran).
After the election, the following topics were discussed:
1. Livia Gertis (Coordinator re:ERUA, University of Konstanz) and Jennifer Eschweiler (Assistant Professor, Roskilde University) presented re:ERUA and the work package “Innovation & Societal Engagement”. Re:ERUA is an ambitious project that is developing the trajectory of the European Reform University Alliance (ERUA).
2. Petra-Alexandra Buhl (Central Office) presented a first concept for the new Zukunftskolleg Research Award and new cooperation within the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting.
3. Since, in the past, presentations at the Zukunftskolleg (guest talks, Jour fixe talks, etc.) have triggered discussions about racism, sexism, or how to deal with emotionally loaded content, we would like to discuss with you: Do we need dedicated discussion channels? Do we need to revisit these topics in dedicated Jour fixes or discussion rounds? How does the interdisciplinary viewpoint at the Zukunftskolleg compare to the disciplinary view within a specific subject? Should we introduce normative action?
Jour fixe in the 2022 summer semester
12.04.2022
Malte Drescher (Vice Rector for Research, Academic Staff Development and Research Infrastructure)
“Current plans of the university for creating more long-term perspectives and transparent career paths for postdoctoral researchers”
19.04.2022
Alexander Etkind (Senior Fellow / Department of History)
“Surviving the Anthropocene: The New Political Economy of Virtual Coloniality”
A virtual sequel to his Nature’s Evil. A Cultural History of Natural Resources, this talk addressed the new transformation of the European political economy in the age of the Anthropocene. Constructing its “barbell model” (juxtaposed to the popular “doughnut model” by Kate Raworth), Etkind questions the issue of online-offline interactions from a fresh perspective: Is cyberspace a “colony” that is producing growth for the stagnating “metropolis” of the physical world? And, if so, what would its decolonization look like? Relying on this virtual-colonial metaphor, he conceptualizes “ghost emissions”, defined as the amounts of CO2 saved by digital interactions; “virtual growth”, which could (and already does) compensate for physical degrowth that is required by climate action; and, finally, “digital prosumers” (virtual producers-consumers who “emigrate online”) as the settlers of the New Virtual World. His model proceeds from a hypothesis that decarbonization works as a push factor for the economy which would survive the Anthropocene and that digitalization works as a pull factor. While the COVID-19 pandemic intensified this double action, Russian military aggression aims at resisting and reversing it. Despite these and other contingencies, the double action of decarbonization and digitalization will remain the strategic direction of further developments. From the perspective of post-pandemic and post-war Europe, the hope is that the Green (and Blue-Yellow?) Recovery will produce not the gloomy “1.5-metre society, 90% economy” predicted by pundits, but instead a deep and progressive transformation that will make nature cleaner, people safer, and economies richer.
26.04.2022
Felix Hamborg (Associated Fellow / Department of Computer and Information Science) and Franziska Weeber (Department of History and Sociology)
“Towards Semi-Automated Content Analysis: Using Deep Learning to Assist Manual Annotations”
Much research in the social sciences relies heavily on manual annotation, e.g. of textual documents such as party manifestos or news articles. And for good reason because only humans can reliably recognize subtle nuances in texts and read between the lines. However, these analyzes are fairly costly and can take considerable time since they are conducted manually. This talk gave an overview of Hamborg and Weeber’s previous and future research on making these analyzes more efficient by using state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques, such as BERT. Specifically, they summarized their prior work on the automated identification of media bias in news articles. They then outlined their current research project, in part funded by the Zukunftskolleg, which will extend their approach to further use cases in social science research.
03.05.2022
Philipp di Dio (Research Fellow / Department of Mathematics and Statistics)
“Time-Dependent Moments”
First, Philipp di Dio gave an introduction to the field of his mathematical research: moments. From the current state of the art and applications in this field, he showed how his research approach contributes. He presented novel results and an unforeseen new research direction which he will explore. Since his research lies in the combination of partial differential equations and (real) algebraic geometry, he showed how he can connect both well-developed mathematical fields and also show difficulties in the field of mathematics. At the end, he discussed his experiences and learnt about the audience’s experiences of interdisciplinary working.
10.05.2022
Eric Lott (Senior Fellow / English and American Studies, City University New York Graduate Center, USA)
“Blackface from Time to Time”
Ethnic drag in the form of white performers in blackface seems to exist in some kind of eternal present: instances of its performance go back centuries, come into commercial popularity in the US in the 1820s and '30s, dominate popular entertainment on stage in the form of the “minstrel show” throughout the 19th century, then migrate to Hollywood film for much of the 20th century. And it was a global phenomenon, extending from Great Britain to South Africa, Japan to Australia. The official censuring of blackface in the 1960s has coincided with its “vernacular” reappearance in Halloween costumes, fraternity parties and college yearbooks to this day, where – from time to time – blackface makes its inevitable return. Recent cases of white activists and scholars passing for Other (Rachel Doležal, Jessica Krug, Andrea Smith) only thicken the plot. Lott talked about the time-to-time temporality of blackface’s ongoing present and why American culture seems to require the racial, sexual and gendered interventions of its eternal returns.
17.05.2022
Paula Tesche (Research Visit Fellow / Department of Literature & Linguistics)
“Resistance memories of the catastrophe in the city of Concepción, Chile”
This research describes the effects of the socio-political catastrophe of the military coup (1973) and the dictatorship (1973-1990) in Concepción, Chile. From a current day perspective, the study analyzes the political resistance memories present in five places in the city of Concepción. These places are: Vicaria de la Solidaridad, the torture and detention centre in the former fort “El Morro” and the memorials “23 de Agosto”, “La Ronda de la unidad”, Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos y Ejecutados Políticos de la región del Biobío y del Cementerio General de Concepción.
Ekaterina Mikhailova (Research Visit Fellow / Department of Politics and Public Administration)
“Refugee Processing Systems in Konstanz and Kreuzlingen: Institutional and Societal Transformations over Time”
The presentation looked at Konstanz and Kreuzlingen as border twin cities and contextualized their efforts in working with refugees and migrants, with the challenges and opportunities border twin cities typically face in the field of migration and integration. In addition, the talk presented preliminary findings on how refugee processing has evolved in Konstanz and Kreuzlingen from the so-called Arab Spring of 2010-2012 to the war in Ukraine in 2022. More specifically, it outlined the constellation of stakeholders participating in refugee processing at the local level on the German-Swiss border and their most recent activities in response to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees. To conclude, the presentation named future research avenues identified with this exploratory study.
24.05.2022
Giora Hon (Senior Fellow / Department of Philosophy / University of Haifa, Israel)
“Universal aspects of scientific practice: Commitment, methodology and technique”
The thesis proposed in this talk is a contribution to philosophy of science from the perspective of the practice of science. He seeks general and indeed universal features which characterize scientific practice, that is, features that are inherent to the practice of science. He has discerned three salient universal features of scientific practice: commitment, methodology and technique. He claims that these three features can invariably be found in any scientific practice, be it in constructing a theory, conducting an experiment, or exploring a new scientific domain. In most general terms, commitment plays the role of presupposition, methodology constitutes the inferential mode and technique facilitates the transition from the general to the specific. His claim is that scientific practice is essentially a judicious engagement with these three components, where the goal is to draw conclusions and thereby to contribute to the corpus of scientific knowledge. He illustrated the thesis with the case of Maxwell’s contribution to electromagnetism, whose theory of electrodynamics changed fundamentally the perception of reality since the time of Newton.
31.05.2022
Joint virtual session with our cooperation partner in Tokyo – the Waseda Institute of Advanced Study (WIAS)
“Anthropocene”
The Jour fixe was structured as follows:
Welcome – 10 min. (Toshi Arimura & Giovanni Galizia – directors of WIAS & ZuKo)
Round table – 45 min (4 x 7-10 min. lightning talks by Udith Dematagoda (WIAS / former Zukunftskolleg Fellow), Susumu Annaka (WIAS), Alexander Etkind (Senior Fellow / Zukunftskolleg), Eduardo Luersen (new Postdoctoral Fellow / Zukunftskolleg), moderated by chair Toshi Arimura
Q&A session – 25 min. (4 breakout rooms for smaller group discussions with matched moderators – Dematagoda/Bloomfield, Annaka/el-Wakil, Etkind/Xu, Luersen/Kong); closing session – 10 min. (Satomi Yamamoto, associated director WIAS)
14.06.2022
Visiting Fellows from Ukraine
Hanna Klipkova (Department of Politics and Public Administration)
“The Impact of the War on State-Institutional Building Processes in Ukraine”
The Russian invasion in February 2022 raised new challenges for researchers in post-Soviet states. One could consider the post-Soviet state as a specific type of state that cannot be described just as a transition stage from the authoritarian regime to the democratic one. We propose to consider the post-Soviet state as a self-sufficient phenomenon and research instrument for trajectories of political regimes and state institutions. The post-Soviet state can be described as a stable constellation of formal and informal state and political institutes. Instead of being a temporary frame for describing transition, the post-Soviet state emerged as a new, relatively sustained type of state with its own arsenal of governing techniques. More than 30 years of state-building in Ukraine, like in other post-Soviet countries, seems to have brought unsuccessful results. The outcomes of democracy, sovereignty and the whole political system were qualified in terms of neopatrimonialism (Fisun 2016, Hale 2016) and explained with the low quality of the institutional system. The lack of mature and legitimate institutions for the circulation of elites, institutional imbalances in the state power system and an undeveloped party system led to structural defects in political governance and to inversions of its political transformation.
The post-Soviet type of state is characterized by the emergence of Soviet and Western liberal state systems. The socialist legacy remained partly destroyed, while the new liberal economy and state models were not implemented completely. This symbiosis created a specific destructive, but viable state-institutional system. At its core lies neopatrimonialism nature with the profit-seeking behaviour of elites, the emergence of authorities and business groups, using the state’s capacity in private interests and patron-client networks as the dominant principle of political market organization. Neopatrimonialism can be considered as a state capture problem, as privatization of the public policy sphere. There is a dominance of informal institutions hidden behind the facades of formal but incapable institutions.
When it comes to further post-conflict reconstruction, there is no doubt that the war will have a strong influence on the nation-building process. Ukrainian society nowadays demonstrates a new level of consolidation. All social and political cleavages have the opportunity to be repaired by the powerful rise of national unity.
The theory tells us that the war can create a state and support nation-building processes. There is an opportunity to trace this hypothesis. It seemed impossible in the 21st century, but the crisis in the global security system has brought it back into the centre of the political discourse.
History demonstrates that large-scale wars can enhance or even create nations. And for political scientists, the key question will be whether Ukraine is able to build a capable political-institutional system after the war? Will it follow the Afghan failed-state scenario or will it give us a chance to use the war in terms of the Tillian perspective as the state-making driver? It will be the main post-conflict challenge for Ukrainian statehood.
The purpose of her research is to define possible trajectories of state-institutional system building after the greatest bifurcation point for the Ukrainian nation. There is a chance to rebuild the Ukrainian state on the new principles and to change the “path dependence” trap (Mahoney 2000). The most crucial point for the Ukrainian state after the war will therefore be how Ukraine can improve the quality of governance and avoid further corrosion of state capacity.
Yaroslava Muravetska (Literature)
“Cultural practices of anti-Soviet struggle”
One of the fronts of Russia’s war against Ukraine is ideological, which is largely related to the propaganda of the mythologized past of the Soviet Union. In fact, this discourse is based on opposite theses: on the one hand, the Soviet Union is interpreted as a union of fraternal nations, and, on the other hand, Russia’s supremacy is asserted. Consequently, the collapse of the Soviet Union is interpreted as a tragedy caused by the separation of the Ukrainian nation from Russia, and not as the liberation of Ukraine from occupation. Thus, Russia’s attack on Ukraine is interpreted as a war of “fraternal nations”. The purpose of this report is therefore firstly to record the fact of the Ukrainian nation’s struggle against the Soviet Union (using the information leaflets of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) as an example) and secondly to interpret and analyze narratives of the ABN ideology, in particular to debunk the myth of “fraternal nations” and outline the imperial essence of both the Soviet Union and Russia.
Tetyana Nikolaychuk (Economics)
“Post-war sustainable development in Ukraine: innovative economic and environmental activities (cybernetic planning and chess business modelling: new rules, new tools)”
The Russian military invasion of Ukraine has led to numerous transformations in the social, economic, political, ecological and regulatory field. The formation of effective main economic drivers in the post-war period is the key to restoring civil society institutions and the market economy in Ukraine.
The invasion means the destruction of existing markets, business collaborations and the formation of new vectors of military and civilian activities.
The study considers the economic and organizational feasibility and profitability of the post-war market. Chess business modelling will find the most available business options for entities and identify the side effects for society and the environment. Chess business modelling also could be used as a tool for dealing with institutional traps.
The aim of the study is to identify the main possible milestones related to the implementation of economic and environmental reform in the context of decentralization in the post-war period.
Bohdan Shumylovych (History and Sociology)
“Healing a socialist body: Soviet Ukrainian television and media psychotherapy”
On 31 March 1988, Soviet television introduced the media bridge between Moscow and Kyiv with the popular television programme “Vzgliad”. This programme, which had an experimental character in the spirit of Perestroika, showed amazing surgery, which aimed to improve the health of Soviet people through the media. A Ukrainian physician, Anatolii Kashpirovskii, performed drug-free anaesthesia remotely via a TV-bridge from Moscow while a surgeon did the operation in Kyiv. In 1989, Kashpirovskii presented six instalments of these so-called televised healings, and, soon after, these therapeutic broadcasts in the media were stopped. The case of Kashpirovskii and televised surgeries, followed by the repetitive mass TV hypnosis sessions in 1989, exposed several aspects of late Soviet history: late détente, televisual experiments, media bridges and perception of the socialist body. Shumylovych’s talk explored Ukrainian broadcasts of 1989 and how they were perceived by ordinary people, media professionals and medical circles. Late Soviet television was shaped by the specific “unimaginative imagination” of these broadcasts.
21.06.2022
Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) group (2021 call) of Valerio Coladonato (Assistant Professor – Film Studies Department, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
“Screen media, fiction and European populisms: research questions and methodological challenges of an interdisciplinary project”
Narrative work is a crucial element of populist mobilization, especially through the lens of specific emotional discourses (pride, rage, fear). Nevertheless, while scholarship has focused increasingly on informative and digital media, the role of audiovisual fiction – films and TV series in particular – remains to be fully explored. Part of the difficulty lies in the interdisciplinary nature of the object: How can the tools of film and media studies (for the analysis of emotion and reception) be combined with the interpretation of contemporary populisms developed in political sciences? In this first presentation of the project “Screening European Populisms (2008-2020): Audiovisual Fiction, Social Media and Political Affect”, the group aimed to identify the key methodological challenges in conducting a comparative analysis of the circulation of populist affect through fictional screen media content across five countries: Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the UK. In particular, they reflected on the conceptual and methodological tools that can allow for a dialogue between media studies and political theory in order (i) to identify relevant case studies from these countries; (ii) to define a rigorous method of analysis of the products themselves, accounting for the problematics of representation, circulation and reception; (iii) to embed in the design of the project itself elements of its potential social impact in the areas of media literacy and youth participation in politics.
28.06.2022
Amanda Melin (Senior Fellow / Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Calgary, Canada)
“Anatomy and dietary specialization influence sensory behaviour among sympatric frugivorous primates”
As the interface between animals and their environments, the form and function of sensory systems provide a window into the ecology of past and present species. Here, Melin discussed her collaborative sensory ecology research on three wild, sympatric primate species: white-faced capuchins, Cebus imitator; black-handed spider monkeys Ateles geoffroyi, and mantled howler monkeys, Alouatta palliata. She presented analyses of foraging behaviour sequences together with measurements of sensory variation (colour vision phenotype, olfactory and hand morphology) and dietary specialization. She finds the most frugivorous species (Ateles geoffroyi) sniffs fruits most often, that the species with the highest measure of manual dexterity (Cebus imitator) uses manual touch the most often, and that main olfactory bulb volume is a better predictor of sniffing behaviour than is nasal turbinate surface area. She also found evidence that colour vision phenotype impacts use of non-visual senses. These findings shed light on how dietary specialization and sensory variation shape foraging behaviours and on methods for investigating the relationships between behaviour and anatomy.
James Higham (Senior Fellow / Department of Anthropology, New York University, USA)
“What can monkeys tell us about responses to climate change-related natural disasters?”
Primates such as rhesus macaques represent our best non-human models for understanding how the physical and social environment ‘gets under the skin’ and impacts our health. In September 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by the largest and strongest hurricane ever to strike the island, Hurricane Maria. Just before it made landfall, it first struck a small island off the coast, Cayo Santiago, home to 1,500 rhesus macaques and the longest-running study of primates in the world. Here, he discussed the hurricane and its aftermath on Cayo Santiago. He showed evidence that the impacts of the hurricane have aged the animals molecularly, with animals living through the hurricane being biologically older for their chronological age than animals who did not. He also showed that animals responded to the disaster by reaching out and making new social connections, with those individuals who were particularly socially isolated before the storm increasing their social effort and making new friends. This occurrence offers a unique opportunity to study how natural disasters impact long-term health, and also shows the role of sociability and of societies in providing resilience and support in the face of adversity.
Nathaniel Dominy (Senior Fellow / Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, USA)
“Secrets of the sacred baboons”
Punt was a major emporium for monkeys during the 2nd millennium BC. It was reached by land or sea and located south and east of Egypt, suggesting a position in the southern Red Sea region, either in Africa or Arabia. Maritime trade between Egypt and Punt spanned 1,200 years, and many scholars view it as the first long-distance leg of the Spice Route. Others describe the Egypt-Punt trading relationship as the beginning of economic globalization. Punt is therefore a port of considerable historical importance, but its location is uncertain and the subject of enduring debate. This lightning talk focused on the bones and teeth of mummified baboons recovered from New Kingdom temples and Ptolemaic tombs. The isotope composition of these tissues is a valuable source of information on the life and lifeways of animals. It is evident that some baboons spent a lifetime in Egypt, which suggests a captive breeding programme, but others were imported from faraway lands. So far, this line of evidence puts Punt in the modern-day countries of Eritrea and northern Somalia, which partially corroborates the hypothesis of German anthropologist Rolf Herzog.
05.07.2022
Assembly of Members and presentation by Research Support
In the first part, the Assembly of Members elected three new members to the Executive Committee – replacing Violeta Ivanova-Rohling, Gruia Badescu and Cristina Ruiz Agudo.
After the election, Melanie Behrens and Danica Kümmel from Research Support gave an overview of their support services with regard to grant proposals, research funding and ethical issues.