Interdisciplinary talks – intergenerational exchange – international perspectives

29 October

Shao-Min Hung (Research Visit Fellow, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan / Psychology): “Attentional modulation in the unconscious sensory world”

Abstract

Attention seems to constrain how we perceive the world, that is, our conscious experience. Does this attentional constraint extend to sensory information that remains unconscious to us? In this talk, Hung showed that attention, specifically how focused we are on a task, gates unconscious semantic processing. In a series of psychophysical experiments, his research team found that participants’ response to a Stroop word slowed down when a preceding unconscious prime word had an incongruent meaning. Critically, this unconscious interference occurred only when the task was word-naming (easy), but not colour-naming (hard). Furthermore, in an ongoing fMRI study, they found that, in the early visual cortex, compared to an incongruent prime, a congruent prime prompted stronger target activation only in the word-naming session, showing successful registration of unconscious information. This difference disappeared in the colour-naming session. Lastly, Hung talked about using this paradigm to study cognitive ageing in older individuals, which revealed that older individuals with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s were more susceptible to unconscious interference, potentially linked to how they used attention. Together, these results demonstrate that similar to conscious processing, unconscious processing is under attentional modulation.

05 November

Gloriana Chaverri (Dept. of Biology) from the Universidad de Costa Rica: “Group stability in bats and beyond”

Abstract

This talk explored the concept of group stability in animal societies, using disc-winged bats (Thyroptera tricolor) as an example. Chaverri’s interest in this topic began during her PhD at Boston University, where she collaborated with experts in bat roosting and behavioural ecology. Fascinated by how resources shape social structures, particularly group stability, she focused on the influence of environmental factors on social cohesion. In this talk, Gloriana Chaverri presented key findings from her studies and provided a brief overview of what is currently known about patterns of group stability across species, highlighting both established knowledge and areas that remain understudied. The goal of her talk was to give an overview to provide a framework for understanding why group stability is crucial in both small bat populations and larger social systems, with potential applications beyond the specific case of bats.

Here are three papers relevant to the topic:

1) doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.06.019

2) doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5936

3) doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-0975-3

26 November

Angelo Javier Neira Albornoz (Postdoctoral Fellow / Computer and Information Science): “Soils: An Intersection of Nature and Society”

Abstract

Soils have always been with us, defining and shaping our (agri)cultural practices, landscaping urban scenarios, and inspiring people, from artists to politicians. However, their impact is so inherent and implicit that we rarely give soils the attention they deserve. Let’s think for a second: What is soil? Is this definition linked to the services soil provides to humans? Is there any value in soils beyond their usefulness?
Based on soil omnipresence and relevance throughout human history, this talk focused on two main topics that inspired Albornoz’s postdoctoral project: (1) Common human perceptions about soils and how they have permeated the way we do soil research. (2) How human perceptions and interests impact scientific practices (e.g. methodological reductionism and oversimplified soil conceptualizations), producing apparent inconsistencies during the use of scientific knowledge for environmental, agricultural and regulatory purposes.

Literature related to his talk:

1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.12.004 (focused on the history of soil sciences)
2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2008.10.008 (as an example of the articles selected for his systematic review)

03 December

Assembly of Members to elect one member for the Executive Committee & Anja Oberländer and Martina Benz from KIM / the Open Access team: “Open Access strategies and policies”

The first part of the Jour fixe started with the Assembly of Members (2-year Fellows, 5-year/ZENiT Fellows and other fellows) to elect one new member to the Executive Committee – replacing/re-electing Anamaria Bentea.

Afterwards, Anja Oberländer & Martina Benz from KIM / the Open Access team gave a talk on how to successfully navigate the open access landscape.

Abstract

Open access means free access to scholarly literature on the Internet. Evolving from the idea that publicly funded research should be accessible and reusable by all without additional charges and legal restrictions, open access has changed scholarly publishing over the last twenty years. What challenges and opportunities does open access offer for scholars, and particularly for early career researchers?

While open access journals and publishers usually operate under the same quality standards as traditional forms of academic publishing, challenges, such as publishing fees or questionable business practices, do occur. On the upside, open access has proven to allow for higher visibility and impact to research results, which is of particular importance for early career researchers.

Informing about the different ways of open access publishing and offering services such as financial support and counselling, the KIM Open Science Team sought to enable scholars at the University of Konstanz to successfully navigate the (open access) publishing landscape.

21 January

Sidney Carls-Diamante (Associated Fellow / Philosophy): “An uncertainty model of suicide”

Abstract

Uncertainty is a factor widely but implicitly acknowledged to contribute to suicidality, but it is not often studied as a suicidogenic factor in its own right. This presentation detailed the role of uncertainty in generating suicidal thoughts and actions. It was proposed that suicidality is a set of cognitive and behavioural strategies for reducing uncertainty and its consequential disruptions to homeostasis, i.e. psychological and/or physiological stability.

The presentation argued that there are three dimensions of uncertainty that specifically contribute to suicidality: uncertainty about 1) whether currently experienced adversity will continue into the future, 2) whether present conditions will improve and 3) when they will change. Persisting through life entails continued experience of such high-uncertainty states that may prove detrimental to homeostasis. In contrast, death is a high-certainty state, wherein distress, pain, or suffering – manifestations of disrupted homeostasis – are reliably predicted to end. Suicidal ideation thus emerges as a mental model that allows the agent to imagine death as a state wherein homeostasis is restored. When the agent’s distress becomes severe enough, escalation to suicidal action can occur as a behavioural strategy to precipitate restoration of homeostasis (in the form of an end to suffering) through death.

Here are some links/contacts provided by Sidney in case you/someone you know need(s) help:

findahelpline.com/countries/de/topics/suicidal-thoughts

telefonseelsorge.de/

hospiz-konstanz.de/trauer/trauer-nach-suizid/

blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/

suicidestop.com/call_a_hotline.html

faq.whatsapp.com/3243110509092762/?locale=en_US

28 January

Abena Yalley (ZENiT Research Fellow / Literature & Politics and Public Administration): “Politics of Sexuality and Reproduction across Cultures: Obstetric Violence, Mental Health and Narrative Exposure Therapy in Africa, Europe and Latin America”

Abstract

Recent investigations into women’s childbirth experiences have made shocking revelations about abuse and sometimes brutal acts of violence during childbirth (Bohren et al., 2019; Yalley 2024). Although the global prevalence is unknown, studies show a very high number of mothers worldwide who report having experienced abuse during childbirth, making it a general societal problem (Yalley at al., 2023; Vacaflor, 2016; WHO, 2019). These abuses, widely conceptualized as obstetric violence, are now receiving widespread public and academic attention as a critical and pressing public health concern. In this project, Yalley and her research team examine how birth-related trauma caused by obstetric violence manifests in the body and translates into mental disorders and adopt the Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) psychotherapeutic interventions for victims of obstetric violence across different cultures: Africa, Europe and Latin America. They do this by first mapping the variety of mental health sequelae of obstetric violence and applying the Narrative Exposure Therapy treatment to prevent appetitive aggression in women. Their project aims to provide insights into the psychological impact of obstetric violence and offers a promising intervention for dealing with it.

04 February

Henrique Almeida de Castro (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology & Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”): “Democratic backsliding as a judicial reason: Powerful idea or self-justifying rhetoric?”

Abstract

The popularity of democratic backsliding and related concepts has increased calls for courts to account for gradual and covert attacks on democracy in their adjudicating processes. However, to the extent that judges display awareness of these ideas, it is hard to assess their impact on decision-making because most cases to which they may apply directly or indirectly affect the judiciary. As such, their discursive adoption can often be plausibly read as self-justifying rhetoric for strategic decisions that would have been made regardless. To address this, Almeida de Castro examines the judicialization of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s reforms of Brazilian participatory councils, a case of intra-executive power concentration with little impact on courts. He shows that the Supreme Court Justices adopting the idea of democratic backsliding and its translations into legal academia (e.g. autocratic legalism) allowed anti-regime actors to reframe previously acceptable reforms as unconstitutional, portraying them as part of a plan to dismantle democracy. His project does not claim that no strategic considerations influenced the Supreme Court’s doctrinally heterodox decisions, but that he sees the role of ideas as necessary. Although arguably positive, the results show that when courts act to defend democracy, they do so based on contestable notions about its meaning.

01 July

Assembly of Members to elect one member for the Executive Committee & Julia Ditter (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature): “Travelling Infrastructures: Energy Ecologies and the Tourist Experience in the Nineteenth-Century Press”

The first part of the Jour fixe started with the Assembly of Members (2-year Fellows, 5-year/ZENiT Fellows and other fellows) to elect two new members to the Executive Committee – replacing Philipp di Dio (Research Fellow / Dept. of Mathematics) and James Wilson (Postdoctoral Fellow / Dept. of History and Sociology).

After the election, Julia Ditter (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature) reported on “Travelling Infrastructures: Energy Ecologies and the Tourist Experience in the Nineteenth-Century Press”

Abstract

The nineteenth-century saw an unprecedented growth of infrastructures built by and for energy from mines to coaling stations, railroads to steamships, gas lines to electric grid. Energy and its infrastructures are inextricably tied together both materially as well as imaginatively, and the nineteenth century provides a crucial lens for making sense of our present energetic and infrastructural entanglements. Julia Ditter’s project “Energy Infrastructures and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press” contributes to the endeavour to understand the social, material and affective foundations of the (Western) reliance on fossil fuels by examining the nineteenth century as an earlier age of energy transition and thereby exploring the foundations of dominant understandings of fossil energy. Through a reading of the mass medium of the periodical press, Ditter examines the role literary and cultural production play in mediating energy transition and reflecting on the process through which fossil fuels have come to form the energetic and ideational infrastructure of our lives in the West: from institutions, political systems and global networks to cultural practices, social formations and literary forms.

An exemplary genre for exploring nineteenth-century energy imaginaries is the travel account. The publication of travel writing about (touristic) visits to coal mines, gas works, and other sites of extraction and energy production in periodicals testifies to the popularity of energy tourism both as a cultural practice and a subgenre of travel writing. In her talk, she provided an overview of the current state of the project and briefly discussed travel writing as an exemplary genre for narrating energy.