Current News

On December 13th, the Recruitment Committee held its second meeting to select 7 new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows for the Zukunftskolleg. On the same day, they chose 14 finalists applying for a 5-year Research Fellowship to invite to the “Workshop on Future Research Directions” on January 23-24, 2014.
In its most recent call for applications (closing date for applications was September 30, 2013), the Zukunftskolleg received more than 100 applications for the 2-year Postdoctoral and 5-year Research…

We congratulate Malte Drescher who received a Heisenberg Stipend from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for his research group on “Electron Spin Resonance” in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Konstanz . Only researchers who fulfil all the requirements for tenured professorships may apply for the Heisenberg Programme. The stipend is funded for 36 months and will start in February 2014.

We congratulate Andrea Lailach-Hennrich who was successful in applying for a research grant within the “Ontario-Baden-Württemberg Faculty Mobility Program” of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg. From September 2014 until February 2015 she will work in the Kant Research Group at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, on her project “The Synthetic A Priori”.

On November 22, on the occasion of the "21. Regionales Wissenschaftsforum" in Tuttlingen, Stefanie Neupert (Biology) was awarded this year´s Manfred Ulmer Scholarship. 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. Furthermore the winners benefit from their integration as Associated Fellows in…

On the occasion of the „Kinderuni Hochrhein“ on November 20, Aline Steinbrecher explained German and Swiss pupils the history of human-animal relationships. In her talk “Schimponauten und Schoßhunde – wie Tiere Geschichte machen“ she spoke of dogs and monkeys and their significance for space research, but also the necessity of farm animals. Read more about it here:

http://www.badische-zeitung.de/neues-fuer-kinder/keine-welt-ohne-tiere--77249460.html

Recently the Executive Committee decided about the winners of the Mentorship programme (application deadline was on October 15). We congratulate Christina Niermann (Sports Sciences) who will be mentored by Stef Kremers from the Department of Health Promotion, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at the Maastricht University; Gudrun Rath (Literature) who will be mentored by Karin Harrasser from the University of Arts in Linz; Gudrun Sproesser (Psychology) who will be mentored by Paul…

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Irene Heim from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA. She has been nominated by Doris Penka and will be our guest until December 13, 2013. Irene Heim is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is one of the most renowned scholars working on the semantics of natural languages.

In its last meeting on October 31, the Executive Committee decided to nominate Senior Fellow Giora Hon to serve as member of the Executive Committee. Giora Hon, from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, is a Senior Fellow from September 1, 2013 to February 28, 2014. He accepted the nomination and was very grateful: “It will be an honour for me to serve on the EC as a Senior Fellow. I am grateful for the invitation to join the EC to which I respond positively.” He will serve…

Daniele Brida was successful in applying for a FET-Open Xtrack grant, funded by the EU. The granted GEMINI (GErmanium MId-infrared plasmoNIcs for sensing)-project aims at laying the foundations for a novel paradigm in surface-enhanced infrared sensing by exploiting plasmonic effects in heavily-doped germanium on silicon. It involves four research groups, one lead by Daniele Brida. The whole project receives funding for a total amount of more than 1.7 million euros, 300.000 euros of which will be…

Jale Tosun (University of Mannheim and University of Heidelberg) and Mary Stegmaier (University of Missouri, Columbia) – who won a Zukunftskolleg Mentorship in 2010 – are the winners of the 2012 “Women's Caucus Award for Best Paper on Women and Politics”. The award from the Northeastern Political Science Association (NPSA) includes a 75 dollar monetary prize and a certificate. The article is entitled “Women's Parliamentary Representation in the Czech Republic: Does Preference Voting Matter?”. In…

During the first Jour Fixe in winter term 2013/14, on October 24, the assembly of members elected Magdalena Balcerak Jackson and Torsten Pietsch as new members for the Executive Committee. They replace Ulrich Sieberer and Thomas Voigtmann whose term of office ended after 2.5 years. We congratulate Magdalena Balcerak Jackson and Torsten Pietsch, and thank Ulrich Sieberer and Thomas Voigtmann very much for their work in the Executive Committee.

We congratulate Philip Leifeld who won the Dissertation Award for the best Social Science PhD thesis in 2011/2012, sponsored by the foundation „Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft an der Universität Konstanz“. His dissertation on „Discourse Networks and German Pension Politics” is honored with 3.000 euros. The award ceremony took place at the Dies academicus of the University of Konstanz on October 18. In April Philip Leifeld already won the Südwestmetall Prize 2013.

Philip Leifeld has received a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for an amount of 315.600 CHF. He cooperates with Prof. Dr. Karin Ingold (Principal Investigator) from the Institute for Political Science at the University of Bern, and Dr. Manuel Fischer (Co-Principal Investigator) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in Zurich. Title of their project is „Overlapping Subsystems: Identification and Integration of Fragmented Games in Swiss…

In its current call for 2- and 5-year Fellowships (the closing date for applications was September 30, 2013), the Zukunftskolleg received 104 applications – 80% from outside Germany. In its first meeting on November 8, 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…

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Attila Tanyi who has been offered a Lecturer Position with a focus on ethics and applied ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, starting on November 1, 2013.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Valerie Shafer from the Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the City University of New York, as well as Yoram Carmeli from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel.
Valerie Shafer has been nominated by Tanja Rinker. During her stay in Konstanz, which is divided into three visits until summer 2014, she will collaborate on two projects. The first project with Tanja Rinker focuses on the relationship between…

We welcome Roxana Halbleib (Economics) and Sven Lauer (Linguistics) at the Zukunftskolleg. Both started their Fellowship on October 1st – Sven Lauer as 2-year Postdoctoral Fellow and Roxana Halbleib as 5-year Research Fellow. Roxana Halbleib also holds a Margarete von Wrangell Research Fellowship at the Chair of Economics and Econometrics at the University of Konstanz. Her project is entitled “Modeling, Estimating and Forecasting Risks”. Sven Lauer works on his project “Pragmatic inference based…

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Margarita Stolarova who has accepted a Substitute Professorship for Early Childhood Development and Education at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences in Kleve in winter term 2013/14 and summer term 2014.

On September 27 at 6:00 p.m., the vernissage of the exhibition „Zufallszwänge. Roboterbilder zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst“ in the Wolkensteinsaal, Kulturzentrum am Münster, Konstanz takes place. The exhibition, that can be visited until October 20 in the BildungsTURM in Konstanz, shows two painting robots/robot painters created by Oliver Deussen (Computer Graphics and Media Design, University of Konstanz) and Patrick Tresset (Senior Fellow/Artist in Residence of the Zukunftskolleg). The…

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Gunhild Berg who has been offered a Postdoctoral Position in the Institute of German Studies at the University of Innsbruck from October 2013. There she will also work on her habilitation thesis “About the concept of “experiment” as polemical term in the natural sciences and the “belles lettres” during the 19th and 20th centuries”.

On September 12 Margarita Stolarova gave a 30 minutes life-interview for the Bulgarian National Radiostation (www.bnr.bg) as an expert on the practices of inclusive education and early child care. She was invited to comment on a recent law initiative of the Bulgarian parliament and to report about the platform www.moedete.bg, an information resource resulting from a research project at the Zukunftskolleg.

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Jeff Kochan who has been offered a Visiting Assistant Professorship for Epistemology and Theory of Science in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Programme of the University College Freiburg from September 2013 until March 2014. The University College Freiburg is an undergraduate college within the University of Freiburg. Jeff Kochan assured: “I’ll maintain my strong connection to the Zukunftskolleg during this time.”

We welcome 14 new Fellows at the Zukunftskolleg - eleven 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows and three 5-year Research Fellows: Julien Bernard (Philosophy), Joanna Chojnicka (History), Maria Cruz Berrocal (History, 5-year), Laura Iapichino (Mathematics), Claudius Kratochwil (Biology), Ben Lambert (Mathematics), Julia Langkau (Philosophy), Bernard Lepetit (Biology), Daniel Plaumann (Mathematics, 5-year), Beatriz Puente Ballesteros (History), Paraskevi Salamaliki (Economics), Denis Seletskiy (Physics,…

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Giora Hon from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. It is his second stay at the Zukunftskolleg. This time he has been nominated by Helen Gunter and Julia Jones. He will be our guest until February 2014. Prof. Hon's work is located at the interface between the history of physics and the philosophy of science. His research is driven by general (philosophical) questions and concerns about science. In particular, his…

Postdoctoral Fellow Martin Elff and Susumu Shikano from the Department of Politics and Public Administration developed – in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Konstanz and the Centre for Democracy in Aarau, Switzerland – a decision-making tool called “ParteieNavi” for the upcoming Bundestag elections on September 22. It serves as addition to the Wahl-o-Mat of the “Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung” and aims at helping the electorate to put its political position in relation…

Margaret Thomas has been offered a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, California, USA, from January to May 2014. She is invited to the research semester on “Model Theory, Arithmetic Geometry and Number Theory”. The mathematician is one of only seven MSRI Postdoctoral Fellows who were selected worldwide for the program. "This semester will bring together many senior mathematicians in my field, as well as junior researchers, to the…

We also welcome 2-year Postdoctoral Fellow Panteleimon Eleftheriou (Mathematics and Statistics) at the Zukunftskolleg. He started his Fellowship on August 1st and works on his project “Groups definable in tame expansions of o-minimal structures”. Before coming to Konstanz Panteleimon Eleftheriou was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

We welcome Julián Torres-Dowdall (Biology) at the Zukunftskolleg. He started his 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowship on August 1st. He works in the Laboratory for Zoology and Evolutionary Biology of Axel Meyer on his project “Does side matter? Evolution of genital asymmetry in livebearing fishes”. Julián Torres-Dowdall is one of a total of 15 new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows that were selected in the latest call for applications.

We welcome Stefanie Neupert (Biology), winner of this year´s Manfred Ulmer Scholarship, 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. ln her PhD project “Social Communication in Ants”, Stefanie Neupert will study the rules governing nestmate…