Meet, talk and network
Every Tuesday during the semester, the fellows meet at the Zukunftskolleg, talk about their research, and network with each other and with guests.
Here you can see all Jour fixe presentations that took place in the past year:
Jour fixe in the 2023/2024 winter semester
24 October
ZUKOnnect & Herz Poster Session
Our eight new ZUKOnnect & Herz Fellows (2023 cohort) organized a poster session.
The poster session started with a short round of lightning talks, in which each of the ZUKOnnect & Herz Fellows presented their research topic in two minutes to the whole audience. Afterwards, the posters were presented to the audience.
- Jennifer de Sousa Barros, Biology: “The influence of collective behaviour on energy expenditures and thermoregulation in Egyptian fruit bats”
- Israel Ehizuelen Ebhohimen, Biology: “Natural compounds in essential oils as prospective substitutes for synthetic antioxidants in the storage of foods with high percentage composition of lipids”
- Oscar Eduardo Escobar Lasso, Mathematics and Statistics: “Analysis and numerical simulation of Aedes aegypti control strategies using the sterile insect techniques”
- Ashwinder Kaur, Physics: “Perovskite solar cells for integrated self-charging supercapacitors”
- Sarveswaran Kengatharaiyer, Linguistics: “Building treebanks for Tamil”
- Nadia Martin, Literature, Art and Media: “Posthuman landscapes in Latin American Art”
- Khanyile Joseph Mlotshwa, Politics and Public Administration: “The colonial and apartheid roots of urban authoritarianism in South Africa”
- Natascha Roth Eichin, Educational Science: “Practices, experiences and aspirations: family & school relations”
Professor Dorothea Debus (Vice Rector for International Affairs, Equal Opportunity and Diversity at the University of Konstanz) closed the session.
31 October
Information session
Thomas Wrabetz (LVE Team) informed the Zukunftskolleg Fellows about course evaluation (LVE) / courses for online evaluation and how to register courses, etc.
Afterwards, Laura Dirmaite and Mihaela Mihaylova from the Central Office offered help with potential questions and problems on “How to fill in forms (travel forms and applications for undergraduate student assistants, etc.) or “How to apply for co-funding?”
To close, the fellows gathered for coffee and a small Halloween get-together.
07 November
Tobias Sutter (Research Fellow / Computer and Information Science)
“Machine learning for dynamical systems”
Abstract
Given the recent progress in information technology with real-time data being available at large scale, many complex tasks involving dynamical environments are addressed via tools from machine learning, control theory and optimization. While control theory in the past has mainly focused on model-based design, the advent of large-scale datasets raises the possibility to analyze dynamical systems on the basis of data rather than analytical models. From a machine learning perspective, one of the main challenges going forward is to tackle problems involving dynamical systems which are beyond static pattern recognition problems. In this talk, Tobias Sutter gave an overview of different problems lying at this intersection of dynamical systems, learning and control that he has worked on in the past. One such problem is reinforcement learning, which basically aims to learn an optimal policy from data by cleverly interacting with an unknown dynamical system described as a Markov Decision Process.
14 November
Sidney Carls-Diamante (Fellow / Philosophy)
“Creativity as uncertainty reduction: an active inference model”
Abstract
This presentation introduced an active inference-based model that construes creativity as a set of strategies for reducing uncertainty, thereby accounting for how imagination is actualized into invention. The model focuses on creativity as novelty, originality, and unusualness and elaborates the processes by which creative thought is translated into creative action. Creative thought is used as an umbrella term for creativity-related cognitions. Creative action refers to behaviours, such as invention, by which the contents of creative thought are actualized to produce creative output.
The model formulates creative thought as an epistemic strategy for exploring the world, where novel, original and unusual aspects of creative thought are interpreted as positing new configurations of objects, ideas or concepts. Because these configurations are not yet extant in the world, there are as yet minimal sources of sensory signals required to test whether the configuration will have the physical, aesthetic or practical features attributed to it in creative thought. Uncertainty regarding the configuration is thus generated. To minimize uncertainty, action policies prescribing behaviours appropriate to realizing the configuration are formulated, generating creative action.
The presentation first discussed the model in its basic form, before exploring its applications to some common patterns of creative action. These include leaving output uncompleted, jumping from one project to another, variations on a theme, derivative works, and continuous, focused work on a particular project. These patterns are accounted for in terms of how they implement uncertainty-reduction processes.
21 November
Mohsen Jenadeleh (Associated Fellow / Computer and Information Science)
“JND-based perceptual quality assessment of nearly lossless compressed visual media”
Abstract
Perceptual quality assessment has been a long-standing problem that attracts attention from both academia and industry. The just-noticeable-difference (JND) methodology has been proposed to measure the human subjective quality of experience in recent years. In this talk, Mohsen Jenadeleh provided a brief review of JND-based visual quality measurement and its applications. He also discussed the biases introduced by current methodologies for subjective JND assessment and presented a methodology to collectively assess the JND and address the bias problem. During this talk, Jenadeleh also explored ways to optimize the JND subjective test methodology in the context of video compression, aiming to estimate user satisfaction with a given video quality at a lower cost and with higher accuracy using both simulations and human studies. Experimental results were presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods.
28 November
Book presentation of “Drag: A British History”
On 28 November 2023, a public book presentation of “Drag: A British History” by Jacob Bloomfield (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature) took place at the university.
Learn more about the book here.
05 December
Ariane Bertogg (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology)
“Societal norms and unequal ageing: the role of life courses and social capital”
Abstract
In the context of the proposed SNSF Starting Grant, Ariane Bertogg investigated the role of societal norms for inequalities in later life health. Despite a rich literature on socioeconomic and gender inequalities in health and healthy ageing differentials between welfare regimes, little is yet known about the role of social-cultural pathways that shape potentials and risks for (equal) healthy ageing within and across countries around the globe. Drawing on the life course framework, this project will test mechanisms related to life course factors and social capital both in mid-adulthood and later life and link them to both behavioural and distributed social norms. The empirical analyses rely on large-scale secondary surveys of older adults using advanced quantitative methods for causal analysis. Bertogg selects micro-level datasets which are designed to be harmonized across countries in Europe, North and Latin America, and Southeast and East Asia, and complements them with contextual level indicators of social norms consisting of aggregate survey data. She has proposed a five-year research programme which will host two doctoral students and one postdoctoral researcher.
12 December
In the Zukunftskolleg-WIAS Joint Workshop, participants gave short lightning talks on “Basic Research for Sustainable Development”.
Speakers
1. “Cancer, spatiotemporal analyses of extracellular vesicle transfer in tumour microenvironment” – Nao Nishida (Assistant Professor / Life Science, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study)
2. “Controlling M-S-H crystallization for building a green future” – Cristina Ruiz Agudo (Research Fellow / Chemistry, Zukunftskolleg)
3. “Autocratization: causes and consequences” – Yuko Sato (Assistant Professor / Political Science, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study)
4. “Self-charging solar panels” – Ashwinder Kaur (Herz Fellow / Physics, Zukunftskolleg)
The lightning talks were followed by a short Q&A session, moderated by fellows from the partner institute.
Joint digital Zukunftskolleg-WIAS Workshop with lightning talks on “Basic Research for Sustainable Development”
19 December
Ori Harel (Educational psychologist and mindfulness yoga trainer)
“Strengthening mental resilience: strategies for dealing with academic stressors”
Abstract
Academic living is often experienced as stressful due to some specific characteristics, such as work-life balance, relationship with supervisors, meeting deadlines, the lack of constructed schedules and more (Tsai & Muindi, 2016). Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as compared to the general population (Evans et al., 2018; Loissel, 2020).
In this participatory workshop, Ori Harel discussed specific academic-related stressors as well as how to manage them and cope better with them. Together with the audience, she practised various exercises to enhance wellbeing, assertiveness and confidence.
09 January
“What are our academic values?”
We all have, each of us, a research agenda, a topic, a question, a goal that drives our thinking and pushes us to do the research that we burn for. These questions are rooted within our own discipline. It is easy for us, when we are asked, to explain what we do and why.
We all also have academic values, overarching principles, ethical values that we follow in our research practice. We would think that these values should be common to all of us, across disciplines. And still: when pushed to name them, to put them in a nutshell, maybe even to write a statement “What are our academic values?” – we fail.
This is a problem, in particular given that living our (implicit) values may change, or maybe even the values themselves change and come under increasing pressure in a changing world: research innovations, artificial intelligence, sustainability and climate change might all affect our values, and how we defend them.
Do you have a clear formulation for your “academic values”? Or a strong statement about how – if so – they are coming under strain? Or do you feel that this is a non-topic, a distraction that only diverts concentration away from the really important things to do and think?
These questions were discussed during the Jour fixe, and it was decided that “Academic Values” will also be the topic at the Zukunftskolleg’s Scientific Retreat 2024.
16 January
Hendrik Rommeswinkel (Research Visit Fellow / Economics, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Japan)
“Preference for verifiability”
Abstract
Decision-makers may face situations in which they cannot observe the outcomes that result from their actions. In such decisions, motivations other than the expected utility of good outcomes may play a role. The present paper axiomatically characterizes a decision model in which the decision-maker cares about whether it can be verified ex post that a good outcome has been achieved. Preferences over acts uniquely characterize a set of events that the decision-maker expects to be able to verify should they occur. The decision-maker maximizes the ex ante expected utility across verifiable events of the ex post worst possible outcome that may have occurred on a verified event.
For example, a firm choosing between different carbon emission reduction technologies may find that some technologies leave more uncertainty ex post about the level of emission reduction than other technologies. The firm may care about proving to its stakeholders that a certain amount of carbon reduction has been achieved and may employ scientific studies to do so. In expectation, it may choose less efficient technologies if the achieved carbon reduction is more easily verifiable using the available scientific studies.
23 January
Elisa Deiss-Helbig (Research Fellow / Politics and Public Administration)
“Understanding political inequality via electoral promises and their fulfilment”
Abstract
Political equality, a foundational tenet of democracy, is currently under scrutiny across diverse democracies. Across a wide range of democracies, a burgeoning literature has revealed that public policy fails to represent the interests of a range of different constituencies. This research casts serious doubt on the realization of the democratic ideal. Despite the fact that electoral promises are highly relevant to government policies, we lack empirical evidence about political inequality at the early stages of policy formulation and how it evolves over the subsequent stages of the policy-making process.
This presentation delved into Elisa Deiss-Helbig’s research on electoral promises and their fulfilment, contributing valuable insights to our comprehension of unequal representation. Key questions guided this exploration: Which social groups are the recipients of electoral promises, and how do these promises materialize into tangible actions? Furthermore, an exploration of individual-level variations in the deservingness perceptions of a wide range of social groups deepened our understanding of the formulation and fulfilment of electoral promises. Additionally, from the demand side, the discussion explored how citizens respond to targeted promises within electoral programmes and what conditions their reactions to the fulfilment and breach of these promises. This shed light on parties’ incentives in making and fulfilling promises for specific social groups, providing valuable insights into the broader landscape of democratic representation.
30 January
María Cruz Berrocal (Associated Fellow [former Research Fellow] / History and Sociology)
“The archaeology of small islands in the Pacific: the past for the future”
Abstract
Maria Cruz Berrocal dealt with several case studies on Pacific islands where she has conducted fieldwork in the last decade (Moturiki, Fiji; Alofi, Wallis and Futuna; Rota, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), focusing on the following topics: the relation of the archaeological record with current forest masses; the level of anthropization of the islands; the contrast between land uses and settlement patterns in the past and the present; the potential that the archaeological record offers for an understanding of carrying capacity and agricultural practices; and the future of the coastal/inland dichotomy currently observed in islands that are suffering from rising ocean levels day by day.
06 February
Jennifer Randerath (Associated Fellow [former Research Fellow] / Psychology)
“To do or not to do – affordance judgements in older participants and stroke patients”
Abstract
Whether an individual will engage in a specific action in daily life depends on the perceived capabilities and the environmental factors at play (referred to as affordance perception, which involves the perception of possibilities for action). For instance, when a car approaches, the decision to cross the road safely is influenced by factors such as the person’s speed in comparison to the approaching car. We propose that the decision-making processes, known as affordance judgements, are shaped and activated by the perception of affordances and are significantly influenced by prior experiences and expected outcomes of actions.
Various tasks can lead to either overestimating or underestimating one’s abilities. Mistaken decisions arising from overly cautious or overly liberal responses or from impaired perceptual sensitivity (such as after a stroke) can result in risky situations. In this talk, Jennifer Randerath introduced a research line that aims at a stepwise development of assessments and training approaches for judging action opportunities.
Jour fixe in the 2024 summer semester
09 April
Assembly of Members & Coaching Workshop for (Jour fixe/interdisciplinary) presentations
The first part of the Jour fixe started with the Assembly of Members to elect one new member to the Executive Committee – replacing Noelia Martinez Doallo (Postdoctoral Fellow / Law) from May 2024. James Wilson (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology) was elected as new EC member.
After the election, Anke Waldau (Academic Staff Development) offered a Coaching Workshop for (Jour fixe/interdisciplinary) presentations.
16 April
Noelia Martinez Doallo (Postdoctoral Fellow / Law)
“No general moral duty to participate in biomedical research”
Abstract
Although international law documents on the topic make it plain that participation in biomedical research goes above and beyond the call of duty and its lawfulness depends on participants’ informed consent, some authors have dared to posit a moral duty to participate in biomedical research. Such proposals became especially appealing in the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic, since public health security was urgently at stake and some of the protecting measures adopted at that time – namely, mandatory confinement, quasi-mandatory vaccination, etc. – reinforced the idea that individual and public interests are often found in an apparently insoluble conflict, which seems to presuppose a corporate conception of the common good. In this talk, Noelia Martinez Doallo presented the results of her postdoctoral inquiry, making the case that the prosperity of society is reliant on the promotion of a subset of basic interests common to all community members, which leads us not only to assume a generic or basic interests conception of the common good, but also to conclude that the structural injustice displayed by our current societal cooperative schemes impedes the endorsement of a general moral duty to participate in biomedical research. Still, such moral duty could arise in very concrete situations depending on subjects’ personal circumstances, and thus be confined to certainly exceptional cases.
23 April
Cristina Ruiz Agudo (Research Fellow / Chemistry)
“Crystallization of alternative cement hydrates”
Abstract
The effects of global warming and climate change have become very apparent in recent years, underscoring the need for urgent global action to reduce CO2 emissions. Industries, particularly the construction industry, face unique challenges that require upgrades or replacements while maintaining significant production volumes. Among these, the cement industry stands out as a major contributor to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the cement industry will account for nearly 7% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in 2021. Cementitious materials literally form the foundation of modern society, providing essential solutions for housing and infrastructure needs. Despite advances in building technologies towards resource efficiency, cement will remain an indispensable building material. As a result, the cement industry faces the daunting task of decarbonizing while meeting growing demand.
In recent decades, the development of environmentally sustainable cements has become a primary concern of the international scientific community. The performance of cement-based materials depends mainly on the micro- and nanostructure of the network of hydrated solid phases formed during curing. Therefore, controlling their formation at the molecular and nanoscale level from the early stages is crucial to modulate their properties.
In this talk, Cristina Ruiz Agudo gave an overview of cement composition and functionality and presented the project proposal supported by the Zukunftskolleg in 2020. This proposal has served as a catalyst, fostering the development of several research avenues that have significantly shaped the current focus of her research group.
30 April
Alina Stocklöv (International Office, Erasmus+ Coordinator) and Josefine Honke (Research Support) informed the participants about their programmes.
“International teaching and training opportunities in Europe”
This information session gave an overview of different opportunities to teach, train and conduct research abroad. The focus lay on mobility grants for teaching/training stays at partner universities within the Erasmus+ programme, possibilities to teach and network in the framework of EUniWell, and international teaching opportunities at the University of Konstanz.
07 May
Yitzchak Ben-Mocha (ZENiT Research Fellow / Biology & Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour) & Maike Woith (Biology)
“GCoo-BreeD: advancing comparative research on cooperative breeding with a peer-reviewed, updatable and fair Global Cooperative Breeding Database”
Abstract
Understanding the causes and consequences of cooperative breeding is the focus of an increasing number of comparative meta-analyses. Nevertheless, recent studies demonstrate that datasets on vertebrates include systematic methodological biases, resulting in a growing number of scholars calling for more rigorous curating work. In this talk, we will present the Cooperative Breeding Database (Co-BreeD), which covers key biological parameters of cooperative breeding birds, mammals and humans. We discuss Co-BreeD’s unique curating principles and how being a population-level, peer-reviewed and updatable database enables (i) studying intra- and inter-species variation and linking between fine-scale social and climatic parameters, (ii) accuracy and (iii) expansion with the publication of new data. We will demonstrate Co-BreeD’s potential by presenting the first results showing that female cooperation is more prevalent than commonly thought and how Co-BreeD data contradicts previous studies that are based on biased data. Finally, we will discuss how Co-BreeD facilitates the integration of under-represented groups into the cooperative breeding research community.
14 May
Guests from WIAS
Guests from our partner institute in Tokyo, the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS), visited the Zukunftskolleg on 13-14 May, and the director and associate directors gave three presentations at the Jour fixe:
Professor Ken-Ichi Akao (Faculty of Social Sciences, Research Area: Environmental Economics)
“Economics of Sustainable Development: Theoretical Inquiry”
Professor Chiharu Tokoro (Faculty of Science and Engineering, Research Area: Transport Phenomena, Materials, Recycling)
“Novel Separation Technology for the Circular Economy”
Professor Satomi Yamamoto (Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Research Area: History of Art/Japanese Literature/Aesthetics)
“Ruins as the Place of Awakening: From the Buddhist Paintings of Medieval Japan”
WIAS directors visiting the Zukunftskolleg
22 May
Gruia Badescu (Research Fellow / History and Sociology) / Sabine El Chama (filmmaker)
Public performance lecture “Beirut-Sarajevo Intersections”
Read more about this lecture here.
04 June
1. Workshop with Barrett Klein on “Presentation Skills”
2. Daniela Rößler (Postdoctoral Fellow / Biology & Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour)
Barrett Klein explains the fellows how to improve their presentation skills.
11 June
CAT group of Ksenia Robbe (University of Groningen)
“Dialogic remembering of ‘transitions’: an empirical approach”
Abstract
In this talk, the CAT (Constructive Advanced Thinking) group presented their research project ‘Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions’ (2021-2024). The project engages with the possibilities and specific strategies of facilitating critical remembrance of the 1980-1990s ‘transitions’ in countries of Eastern Europe, which have been a site of contention and contestation, especially lately as far-right parties in the region have exploited this recent past in their political visions of the future. They introduced their experimental approach to conducting public and small group discussions focusing on memories of this past, which they have developed and tested in different locations in Germany and Poland. This approach aims to bring out and investigate the processes and strategies of building connections across and through differences without avoiding conflict – the practice that we conceptualize as ‘dialogic remembering.
Read more about the CAT group's visit at the Zukunftskolleg here.
25 June
Yeliena Kovalska (Associated Fellow / History and Sociology)
“What occupation does not tell about: status measurement in current Ukraine”
Abstract
This study examines the adaptation of Warner’s Status Characteristics Index (WSCI) to assess social status in contemporary Ukrainian society, acknowledging deviations from traditional occupation-based metrics prevalent in Western contexts. In Ukraine and other post-Soviet nations, social status is more intricately linked to material wealth than to occupation or education. A factorial survey experiment was conducted to test the relative importance of four dimensions for social status evaluations: occupation, income, area of residence, and housing conditions. The experiment was implemented as an online survey in 2023, conducted in the city of Kyiv. A total of 791 respondents rated 6,293 vignettes. The results indicated that income is the primary determinant of status, followed by housing conditions, with occupation and area of residence exerting lesser influence. Notably, the criteria for judging social status remain consistent across gender and socio-economic strata. This study contributes to establishing a standardized index for social status measurement in Ukraine, shedding light on the nuances of social stratification in post-Soviet societies. Furthermore, it discusses the inconsistency of status in Ukrainian society, which is attributed to the rapid transformation toward a market economy and the current war, which amplifies these tendencies.
02 July
Hari Sridhar (Writer in Residence / independent researcher)
Presentation of “Reflections on papers past” website
Abstract
Writing scientific papers is, arguably, the most important task in a scientist’s working life. Papers are the universal currency by which all scientists are compared and evaluated, and, often, the only scientific legacies they will leave behind. Unfortunately, a paper is an imperfect record of scientific activity because it presents a cleaned-up, simplified and reorganized version of the scientific process, leaving out any detail that might distract the reader from understanding its findings and arguments. Over the last eight years, Hari Sridhar has documented the stories behind 150+ landmark papers in ecology and evolution, through interviews with their lead authors. The interviews, as well as thematic exhibits built using the material, have been made publicly available online (https://reflectionsonpaperspast.com/). During his talk, he presented material from the website and reflected on the motivation for this project and learnings over the years.
09 July
Gisela Kopp (ZENiT Research Fellow / Biology & Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour)
“Using baboons to map ancient biocultural pathways across the Sahara”
Abstract
Recent discoveries on the Egyptian-Libyan border have thrown a spotlight on Ennedi, a remote plateau in north-east Chad. Sometimes referred to as the “Eden of the Sahara”, Ennedi is not only prominent for its unique landscape, extraordinary archaeological sites and iconic desert-dwelling fauna but also home to a relict population of baboons, isolated for millennia on this rock island in a sea of sand from their conspecifics further south. The rock art and hieroglyphic inscriptions discovered there have energized debate on the location of Yam, a mysterious unknown region in ancient Egyptian culture, and on the vital role of the Wadi Howar/Yellow Nile corridor during the desertification of the Sahara. The aims of the project are twofold: to determine (1) the immigration history of baboons living in Ennedi today and (2) the geographic provenance of baboons imported to Egypt 6,000 years ago, which fuelled a fascinating worship of baboons in ancient Egyptian culture. The group aims to answer these questions by combining approaches from disparate disciplines: non-invasive wildlife genetics from molecular biology and stable isotope analyses from geochemistry will allow us to track the geographical origins of baboon individuals and situate these findings with historical and archaeological evidence from Egyptology. The overarching objective is to uncover the ancient pathways that connected people and animals living in the eastern Sahara during the Holocene.
16 July
1. Assembly of Members
The first part of the Jour fixe started with the Assembly of Members to elect two new members to the Executive Committee – replacing/re-electing Philipp di Dio (Research Fellow / Mathematics and Statistics) from August 2024 and Svetlana Boycheva Woltering (Research Fellow / Biology) from October 2024. Both were re-elected.
2. Tobias Tober (ZENiT Research Fellow / Politics and Public Administration & Cluster “The Politics of Inequality”)
“Technological change and the welfare state”
Abstract
While traditional economic thinking regarded technological progress as “the tide lifting all boats”, empirical work increasingly suggests that the economic benefits of recent technological change are highly asymmetrically distributed between the winners and losers of this process. In his talk, Tobias Tober described the political consequences of this unequal benefit structure by providing an overview of recent political science literature on the topic, including his own contributions. The focus was on those adversely affected by technological change, particularly their voting behaviour and their demand for various types of policy responses. He related these empirical findings to his ZENiT project “Rage against the Machine? The Distributional and Political Implications of Artificial Intelligence”. He discussed whether and how the political impact of AI might differ and how they will attempt to study these questions in the project.
