The Executive Committee is the central decision-making body of the Zukunftskolleg. It is made up of representatives of the Fellows, Senior Fellows, the Vice Rector for Research, Academic Staff Development and Research Infrastructure at the University of Konstanz and the director.

One Executive Committee members (currently Ariane Bertogg) is also advisory members of the Equal Opportunity Council.

The meetings of the Executive Committee are on Wednesdays from 14:30 until 16:30. The next meetings are:

  • 31 January 2024 (Application deadline: Wednesday, 24 January by 12:00).
  • 10 April 2024 (Application deadline: Wednesday,3 April by 12:00).
  • 15 May 2024 (Application deadline: Wednesday, 8 May by 12:00).
  • 10 July 2024 (Application deadline: Wednesday, 3 July by 12:00).

Layout

Anamaria Jeker Bentea

Fellow

Contact

Post office box: 216

Website

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Linguistics

Project: Cross-linguistic influence in multilingual children and adults: evidence from the real-time processing of Romanian wh-questions

This project investigates language acquisition and processing of Romanian in a multilingual context in Germany, the UK, and Romania. It addresses the real-time comprehension and production of both the minority (heritage) language and the majority (societal) language in child and adult multilingual speakers with three main aims: The first is to break new ground in our understanding of how the different languages of multilingual speakers interact and shape their language processing mechanisms. The second is to determine the nature of the potential discrepancies between various groups of multilinguals and the extent to which factors like cross-linguistic influence and language dominance affect bilingual processing. The third is to disseminate the empirical findings in accessible terms to parents, language teachers and other stakeholders to help them make informed decisions about multilingual practices in the school and the home.
Romanian is a relatively understudied language in multilingual contexts despite the large Romanian diaspora in Europe. To capture the range of variability characteristic of multilingual development, as well as address effects of language dominance, the target groups will include (i) Romanian heritage speakers living in Germany and in the UK, (ii) German heritage speakers living in Romania, as well as (iii) Romanian monolinguals. The choice of language combinations (Romanian-German, Romanian-English) is motivated by grammatical properties that these languages have or not in common. Such properties allow to examine how linguistic similarities or differences modulate the real-time comprehension and production of complex syntactic structures. The investigation will combine behavioural (picture-selection, production) and psycholinguistic (eye-tracking) methods and will compare not only between multilinguals and monolinguals, but also across various groups of multilinguals. The findings of the project will have implications for theoretical models of language processing, and for theoretical and practical aspects of language learning.

Research Fellow since 08/2022

Ariane Bertogg

Fellow

Contact

Phone: +49 7531  88-5692

Room: Y 228

Post office box: 216

Website

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of History and Sociology

Project: Time, Space, and Ties. Multi-Dimensional Contextual Influence on Older Europeans? Participation in Employment and Family Caregiving

Against the background of rising life expectations and welfare budget retrenchments, the societal participation of older people is gaining political and societal importance. The concept of "Productive Ageing" includes various paid and unpaid activities, such as employment, volunteering, informal elder care and grandchild care. Despite a large share of older men and women being engaged in one or several productive activities, we can observe considerable gender differences in activity patterns. Previous studies have indicated that micro-level theories only partly suffice to explain these differences found. Rather, comparative research indicates that the decisions to take up or leave these activities are highly context-sensitive. However, most studies look at individuals linkages in a rather isolated way, and comparative studies often do not go beyond providing descriptive evidence about country differences. Last but not least, the causal direction of the linkages between several activity types often remains unclear.
The proposed project thus addresses the following two research questions: (1) What contextual dimensions influence the participation of men and women in activities in the public and private domain in their second half of life? (2) How does the influence of different contextual dimensions interact?

Postdoctoral Fellow since 04/2020

Publications on KOPS

Svetlana Boycheva Woltering

Fellow

Contact

Website

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Natural variation of autophagy in Arabidopsis thaliana

Plants, due to their sessile nature, are unable to avoid the environmental changes they often face and are thus forced to adapt to the new conditions. Autophagy, or self eating, is a catabolic process which is important for nutrient recycling under both normal and adverse conditions and, thus, can be viewed as an adaptation mechanism. While autophagy is conserved throughout the eukaryotes, plants can survive and reproduce successfully under normal conditions even when the process is impaired. In contrast to that, prolonged darkness is often fatal to plants which are deficient in the autophagic pathway. Recent data on chlorophyll acquired by inducing autophagy through prolonged darkness in a number of Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes, originating from the entire natural range of the species showed strong variations.

Fellow since 04/2020

Publications on KOPS

Philipp di Dio

Fellow

Contact

Phone: +49 7531  88-3096

Room: Y316

Post office box: 216

Website

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Project: Time-Dependent Moments

In this project I want to investigate time-dependent moments of distributions (functions) from partial differential equations. Recently moment problem implementations showed the usefulness to find solutions of partial differential equations. I extended the moment problem in a systematic and general way to derivatives of moments and proved the existence of solutions of a PDE. Both methods (the moment theoretic and the PDE methods) shall be combined in this project to improve the theoretical foundation of moment problem implementations for PDEs. Hence, the field of the moment problem and the field of partial differential equations will benefit from the results of this project. The University of Konstanz provides the perfect research environment for this project since it has with Prof. S. Kuhlmann and Prof. M. Schweighofer strong active researchers in the field of the moment problem and students are provided with a lecture about the moment problem. As an additional very active researcher in the field of the moment problem the applicant will cooperate with Prof. R. Curto from the University of Iowa, USA, on this project.

Fellow since 03/2022

Website of MoPat conference

Giovanni Galizia

Director

Contact

Phone: +49 7531  88-2238

Room: Y 328

Website

Noelia Martinez-Doallo

Law

Contact

Phone: +49 7531  88-5696

Room: Y 226

Website

Malte Drescher

Vice Rector for Research, Academic Staff Development and Research Infrastructure

Contact

Phone: +49 7531  88-5262

Room: L 804

Website

Responsibilities

Vice Rector for Research, Academic Staff Development and Research Infrastructure
University of Konstanz, Germany

At the Zukunftskolleg from 02/2008 until 02/2013 (former ZWN Fellow)

Affiliated with the Department of Chemistry

Project: New nanostructure probes in electron spin resonance

Electron spin resonance (ESR) can make significant contributions to the elucidation of the structure and dynamics of disordered systems with the aid of specifically introduced spin probes. Within the framework of this project, fundamentally new methods were developed to elucidate even more complex structures and processes. For this purpose, nanostructure probes were used that could be addressed not only by ESR, but additionally by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and optically. An increase in selectivity and a significant expansion of the previously accessible range for structural information at the nanometer scale were the main goals. The new techniques were to be used specifically for research on membrane proteins within the framework of this project.

Mihaela Mihaylova

Consulting coordinator

Contact

Phone: +49 7531 88 4897

Room: Y 319

Office Hours

Mondays - Thursdays 10-12 a.m.

Responsibilities

  • Applications and Support of Postdoctoral, Research, Senior and Associated Fellows
  • Research Programme
  • Selection Procedure
  • Development and Administration of Funding Instruments
  • Coordination of the decision-making bodies of the Zukunftskolleg
  • Development of Workshops, Seminars, and Co-teachings
  • Writing Institutional Reports