Current News

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…

Simon Hanslmayr has accepted a position as Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham. On September 1st, 2013, he will start working in the School of Psychology. For more information see http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/psychology/index.aspx. Simon Hanslmayr has been a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg since July 2010. We congratulate him on his new appointment and wish him all the best!

The Zukunftskolleg welcomes Brendan Balcerak Jackson (Philosophy) as new Associated Fellow. He is Co-Director of the Emmy Noether Research Group “Understanding and the A Priori”. His wife, Magdalena Balcerak Jackson, is a Research Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg since June this year.

Tanja Rinker was interviewed by the local newspaper Suedkurier. She spoke about her research project on “Turkish-German children with and without Specific Language Impairment” and explained the opportunities and challenges for children that grow up with two languages. The whole interview you can read and download here:

http://www.suedkurier.de/region/kreis-konstanz/konstanz/Tanja-Rinker-8222-Viel-sprechen-ist-hilfreich-8220;art372448,6164400

Elena Rosseeva took part in the 63rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting which was dedicated to chemistry. 625 outstanding young researchers from 78 countries have been selected to get the unique chance to participate in the meeting. From June 30 to July 5 they met 35 Nobel Laureates in Lindau to exchange knowledge and ideas, to share their enthusiasm for science and to establish new contacts. For Elena Rosseeva it was an important experience: “It was a great honor for me to participate in the meeting…

We welcome Zhongbao Jian (Chemistry) at the Zukunftskolleg. He started his 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowship on July 1st. He works at the chair of Chemical Materials Science of Stefan Mecking on his project “Stereoselective acrylate insertion polymerization”. Zhongbao Jian is the first of a total of 15 new 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows that were selected in the latest call for applications.

Alexander Titz has accepted a position as group leader of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group “Chemical Biology of Carbohydrates”. On August 1st, 2013, he will start working at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research in Saarbrücken which is part of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. For more information see:

http://www.helmholtz-hzi.de/en/organisation/locations/hips_saarbruecken/about_hips/

We congratulate Alexander Titz and wish him all the best!