Current News

Congratulations to Ulrich Sieberer: the Editorial Board of the Journal of Legislative Studies awarded him the “Best JLS Paper of the Past 20 Years” for his essay “Party Unity in Parliamentary Democracies. A Comparative Analysis”: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13572330600739413#.VQlwjeHzFxJ

We congratulate Julián Torres Dowdall who received a DFG grant to the amount of 324.400 euros to continue his project “Does side matter? The evolution of asymmetric genitalia in livebearing fish”. “In the next three years the research money will be used to do next generation sequencing to answer three questions”, explains the biologist. “1. What are the phylogenetic relationships between Anablepidae fish? 2. Does genital asymmetry result in genetic divergence between asymmetrical morphs? 3. Can…

Working at the Zukunftskolleg can lead to more innovative topics – at least according to a study entitled “Age and the trying out of new ideas”. Economist Mikko Packalen from the University of Waterloo in Canada and economist Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford University in California conducted an analysis of more than 20 million biomedical papers published over the past 70 years. They found that young researchers are much more likely than older scientists to study exciting innovative topics.…

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Ilja Serzants who accepted a postdoctoral position at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz. In February 2015 he started working as Principal Investigator in the TriMCo project: Triangulation Approach for Modelling Convergence with a High Zoom-In factor. It aims to uncover the multi-factorial mechanisms leading to the rise of linguistic areas.

More information: https://www.trimco.uni-mainz.de/

We congratulate Denis Seletskiy who has been accepted into the Baden-Württemberg Foundation‘s elite program for postdoctoral students. For his project „Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Laser Cooling Cycle in Bulk and Nanoscale Solids“ he will receive 113.000 Euro for a duration of 3 years, co-funded by the Zukunftskolleg. Thanks to the funding he will be able to cover personnel and equipment costs.

More information about the Elite Program: http://www.bwstiftung.de/bildung/programme/hochschule/elitepro…

On time to its first birthday the Center for Multilingualism received a nice present: Its application for a transfer platform „Multilingualism in kindergartens and schools“ to the amount of 162.680 Euro was granted. The project was initiated by Tanja Rinker and Janet Grijzenhout and will be funded by the Excellence Initiative for two years. The goal is to increase and promote multilingualism in educational institutions. “We will collaborate with practitioners from kindergartens and schools. In…

Interdisciplinary, international, intergenerational and inter-institutional: a cooperation that started in 2011 involving researchers from the Zukunftskolleg and the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration” at the University of Konstanz resulted now in the volume “Berechnen/Beschreiben. Praktiken statistischen (Nicht-)Wissens 1750‐1850.” The editors are the Zukunftskolleg Fellows Gunhild Berg and Zsuzsanna Török, as well as Marcus Twellmann from the Center of Excellence.…

We congratulate Daniele Brida who was successful in applying to the Emmy Noether program. He will receive 1.65 million Euros for his project “Femtosecond dynamics in layered materials”. It is about the study of fundamental processes excited by ultrashort light pulses in materials like graphene. The idea is to observe interactions between photoexcited electrons in systems characterized by the fact that are confined in two dimensions. The project duration is 5 years.

More information on the Emmy…

We congratulate Sarang Dalal who has received an ERC Starting Grant in the amount 1,5 Million Euros. His 5-year project is called “The retinae as windows to the brain: An oscillatory vision”. “In this project, we will examine in detail how neural oscillations in the human retina code visual information and facilitate communication with cerebral cortex for further processing”, explains Sarang Dalal. “The retina is not simply a sensor, but performs rather sophisticated processing of visual input…

The radio station Deutsche Welle Brasil published an interview with Nina Schneider, in which she provides a first assessment of the final report of the Brasilian Truth Commission that was released on December 10, 2014. She expects that the research activities about the military regime (1964-1985) will continue.

Many families of the disappeared continue lacking information about the whereabouts and circumstances of death of their loved ones disappeared during the dictatorship. The Truth…

Ulrich Sieberer and Dominik Hierlemann, on behalf of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, have conducted a study on the performance of the German Parliament: the way it debates, the media coverage of these debates, and their perception by citizens. The study finds that parliamentary debates seem to be quite boring for the public, thus media report poorly about them, and as a consequence people know very little about the work and the decisions taken by their representatives. On the other hand citizens’…

Andreas Thum – in cooperation with Dorit Merhof from the University of Aachen and Katja Bühler from the Centre for Virtual Reality and Visualization (VRVis) in Vienna – has received a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in the amount of about 1.1 Million Euro. Their joined approach aims at establishing a 4D reconstruction of the entire larval brain (about 10.000 neurons). The project will be realized by their synergistic expertise in the field of…

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Eleanor Coghill who accepted a position at the University of Zurich. In February 2015 she will start working as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the inter-departmental project “Sprache und Raum” (Language and Space). Nevertheless she will still be in Konstanz and continue her project at the University of Konstanz.

The Zukunftskolleg offers new calls for applications for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Projects and Transdepartmental Collaborative Teaching. The call for interdisciplinary research projects aims to promote research collaboration within the Zukunftskolleg or between a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg and other researchers. It gives grant holders the opportunity to identify and explore new, innovative and/or risky research perspectives with neighbouring disciplines and across disciplines.
The…

A cooperation born at the Zukunftskolleg between Doris Penka and Chiara Gianollo now resulted in the publication “Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface” (ed. Gianollo, Chiara; Jäger, Agnes; Penka, Doris):

http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/314115

They thanked the Zukunftskolleg for its support: “It's safe to say that this book definitely wouldn't exist without the Zukunftskolleg. First of all, it originated out of the collaboration that we started at the Zukunftskolleg. The…

We congratulate Barbara Hausmair who has won the Erwin Wenzl Prize of the state of Upper Austria for her dissertation “Am Rande des Grabs. Todeskonzepte und Bestattungsritual in der frühmittelalterlichen Alamannia“. The prize is honored with 2.500 Euros. The award ceremony will take place in Linz in December.

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Joanna Chojnicka who has accepted a teaching appointment at the Leuphana University Lüneburg in winter term 2014/15. She teaches a B.A. seminar on “Nachhaltigkeit in Diskursanalyse: Theorien und Methoden”.

Beatriz Puente-Ballesteros was invited to Harvard University to present the unsong story of chocolate in Early Qing China. At the end of her lecture “Tasting Chocolate at the Kangxi Court: Medicine, Politics, and Global Trade Flows in the 17th Century” she cooked the historical recipe of chocolate in an exercise of experimental archeology.

More information on her talk you find here: http://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/puente

We congratulate Brendan Balcerak Jackson who received a Heisenberg Stipend from the German Research Foundation for his research project “Semantic Structure and the Structure of Rationality”. Only researchers who fulfil all the requirements for tenured professorships may apply for the Heisenberg Program. The stipend is funded for 36 months, with the possibility of a 24-month extension.

Mirjam Müller from the Academic Staff Development of the University of Konstanz has written a book on „Promotion - Postdoc - Professur. Karriereplanung in der Wissenschaft“ („Doctoral Studies – Postdoc – Professorship. Career Planning in Academia“) that was recently published:

http://www.campus.de/promotion_postdoc_professur-8559.html

It serves as reference book for Postdocs in the German-speaking region und describes backgrounds and factors of success for a scientific career between doctoral…

Next time when you enter the Zukunftskolleg common room (Y 329) and you are surprised by the masks in the glass cabinet: They result from this year´s University Day in the Humanities focused on Fine Arts and the theatre of Early Modern Italy. Julia Boll, who offered a workshop, and her students prepared a short play in line with the principles of the “Commedia dell’arte,” using the roles and characters this form of Italian theatre provides. In the cabinet you can see the Venetian masks called…

In its current call for 2- and 5-year Fellowships (the closing date for applications was August 31, 2014), the Zukunftskolleg received 172 applications. In its first meeting on October 1-2, the Recruitment Committee will choose the finalists for the ZIF-funded 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowships and the 5-year Research Fellowships, funded by both the ZIF-programme and the German Excellence Initiative. The Recruitment Committee will hold its second selection meeting for six 2-year Postdoctoral…

Senior Fellow Klaus von Heusinger was appointed as member in the section Linguistic Studies at the Academia Europaea. The institution that was founded in Cambridge in 1988 aims at promoting education and research in Europe as well as strengthening interdisciplinary and international scientific exchange. It consists of about 3.000 members coming from 35 European and eight non-European countries which includes leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and…

Daniel Summerer has accepted a Temporary Professorship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Konstanz. From October 1, 2014 until March 31, 2015 he will be standing in for Prof. Dr. Ulrich Groth in Organic Chemistry with Focus on Chemistry of Natural Materials, Aromatic and Heterocyclic Compounds. It is already the second time that he has been offered this position, last time in winter term 2013/14.

In its latest report “Empfehlungen zu Karrierezielen und -wegen an Universitäten” (“Recommendations for Career Objectives and Paths at Universities”) the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) names the Zukunftskolleg as successful example for promoting young researchers. The report states (on page 119) that an important element of the Zukunftskolleg is the selection of Fellows by a central recruitment committee consisting of internal and external scientists representing all…

We congratulate Marie Revellio (Literature), winner of this year´s Manfred Ulmer Scholarship, and welcome her as Associated Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg. The Manfred Ulmer programme is open to doctoral students of all disciplines at the University of Konstanz and pays 1,000 euros per month over six months. It enables the scholars to bridge a financial gap between their studies and their doctoral phase. Marie Revellio´s PhD project is entitled “Quid facit cum psalterio Horatius? (Hier. epist.…

On August 5, a Munich court and prosecutors agreed to drop the charges against Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone. To put an end to his bribery trial he has to pay a 100 million Dollar fine and thus will not have to go to jail. Ecclestone's lawyer denied that the payment was a circumvention of justice and assured that it is common for settlements to be made in cases such as these. “It is not a deal. It has nothing to do with purchasing freedom”, he insisted. Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Georg Jochum…

Game inventor and Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Steffen Bogen was awarded the “Spiel des Jahres 2014” for “Camel Up” – a game for the whole family that is easy to learn and in which the players have to bet who wins. It is already the second time that Steffen Bogen wins the award: in 2012 for his game “Schnappt Hubi!”.
Read more at: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/spiel-des-jahres-kamele-machen-das-rennen-13045456.html

We congratulate Philip Leifeld who won the Award for the Best Paper of an Early Career Scholar for the paper “National Parliamentary Coordination after Lisbon: A Network Approach” (authors: Philip Leifeld and Thomas Malang). The prize was awarded at the 1st European Conference on Social Networks (EUSN) in Barcelona, Spain, on July 3rd, 2014; prize money were 500 Euros: http://jornades.uab.cat/eusn/content/winners-eusn-2014-conference-awards-p-leifeld-r-vacca