Current News

Thomas Voigtmann is one of this year´s 142 Outstanding Referees nominated by the American Physical Society (APS). The editors of the APS journals have selected them out of more than 60.000 currently active referees. Initiated in 2008, the Outstanding Referee program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. Selections are based on two decades of records on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports. The…

We congratulate Zukunftskolleg Alumnus Rudolf Bratschitsch who accepted a professorship at the Physical Institute at the University of Muenster. Rudolf Bratschitsch was a Fellow from December 2007 until October 2010 as well as a member of the Board of Directors from October 2008 until September 2009. We wish him all the best!

From February 21 until March 8, 2013, erg’s gallery in Brussels shows a solo exhibition of Senior Fellow Alexander Schellow, which is dedicated to the city of Tirana. Based on the artist´s practice to reconstruct experiences through drawings from memory, the installation features drawings, animation films, texts and other materials related to the Albanian city, and testifies the work in progress that the former Artist in Residence is devoting to it.

More information about the exhibition: http:/…

Ulrich Sieberer has been offered a Substitute Professorship in “Comparative Politics” at the University of Konstanz in summer term 2013. He will substitute for Prof. Dr. Christian Breunig who holds the chair since August 2012. The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Ulrich Sieberer and wishes him all the best.

What happened in 2012 at the Zukunftskolleg? Which Fellows were successful and which Senior Fellows visited us? − Answers to these and much more questions you will find in the Annual Report 2012 of the Zukunftskolleg that was published now and will be distributed by mail. You can also download it here: http://www.zukunftskolleg.uni-konstanz.de/downloads/

Due to her research on age-related diseases, chemist Marilena Manea was interviewed for the university magazine Uni´kon, as well as psychologist Simon Hanslmayr who analyses deliberate forgetting processes in the brain. The current Uni´kon issue is entitled “Research in every phase of life”. Published in the same edition you can read an article about the awarding of the Manfred Ulmer Scholarship to philosopher Lena Dreher, doctoral student and Associated Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg. The Uni´kon…

We welcome Denis Gebauer (Chemistry), Nina Schneider (History) and Ilja Serzants (Linguistics) at the Zukunftskolleg. As the first of 16 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows that were selected in the last call for applications, they started their Fellowship in February. The other 13 new Postdoctoral Fellows will come in the course of the next months.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Artist in Residence Patrick Tresset from the Computing Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. He has been nominated by Oliver Deussen from the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Konstanz and by Giovanni Galizia, and will be our guest for 9 months.

Patrick Tresset's main internationally recognised achievements are in the field of computational aesthetics, computational creativity and arts. As Artist in…

David Ganz has been offered a professorship in Art History at the University of Zurich. “This means for me that a long standing dream comes true as the scientific conditions there are very attractive for my work”, says David Ganz. He also thanks the Zukunftskolleg for its support in achieving this success. David is a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg since December 2007.

Common project by Artist in Residence Alexander Schellow and Senior Fellow Klaus von Heusinger

It began with an encounter at the Zukunftskolleg and now resulted in a conference on “Memory and Meaning between Dynamic and Stability”. When Artist in Residence Alexander Schellow and Senior Fellow Klaus von Heusinger met at the Zukunftskolleg about two years ago they had the idea of a common project with artists and linguists. In cooperation with the department of German Linguistics at the…

In the final Workshop on Future Research Directions, held on 10-11 January 2013, the Recruitment Committee decided to offer nine candidates applying for the 5-year Research Fellowships a position at the Zukunftskolleg. Three of them are co-funded by the ZIF-Marie Curie-programme of the EU and six by the German Excellence Initiative. The Zukunftskolleg welcomes its new members.

For further information visit http://zukunftskolleg.uni.kn

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Hans Adler from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, USA. He has been nominated by Gunhild Berg and will be our guest until March 23, 2013.

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Doris Penka who has been offered a Substitute Professorship in “General Linguistics with Semantics as Main Focus” at the University of Konstanz in summer term 2013. She will teach four courses for Bachelor and Master students and substitute for Prof. Maribel Romero, who will be on sabbatical.

Margaret Thomas can stay at the Zukunftskolleg for 3 more years. The DFG is providing funding for her project “Parameterization and Algebraic Points in O-Minimal Structures”. We congratulate Margaret and wish her all the best.

On November 26th and 27th Giovanni Galizia was invited to present the Zukunftskolleg at the symposium “Das deutsche Wissenschaftssystem und seine Postdocs: Perspektiven zur Gestaltung der Qualifizierungsphase nach der Promotion”. The event was held on the occasion of the opening of “Zur Rosen – Haus für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs” at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. Giovanni Galizia took part in a panel discussion entitled „Postdoc-Phase als Qualifizierungsphase: Verlust oder…

Sarang Dalal received a 3-year grant together with his partners Jean-Philippe Lachaux and Philippe Ryvlin (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France) and Gustavo Deco (Center for Brain and Cognition, University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain). Their project “SEMAINE: Simultaneous MEG or fMRI and Intracranial EEG” will be funded through the European Commission's Network of European funding for Neuroscience Research (ERA-NeT NEURON).

In its second pre-selection, held on the 5^th of November, the Recruitment Committee decided to invite 18 candidates applying for the 5-year Research Fellowships to the Workshop on Future Research Directions. The workshop will take place on 10-11 January 2013 at the University of Konstanz. As the Zukunftskolleg will be offering thirteen 5-year positions it will be an exciting competition between the young researchers.

During the Jour Fixe on the 8th of November the Fellows elected Margarita Stolarova as a new member of the Executive Committee. She replaces Martin Bruder who will leave the Zukunftskolleg at the end of the year. He has accepted a position as head of the department of “evaluation and statistics” at the DAAD in Bonn, starting on January 1, 2013. We would like to thank Martin Bruder for his work as an Executive Committee member and look forward to Margaritas contributions.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Irene Heim (Cambridge, USA). She has been nominated by Doris Penka. Her last stay at the Zukunftskolleg was in spring. Now she will be our guest until 24 November.

The Martin Buber Society – a joint initiative of the BMBF and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a cooperation partner of the Zukunftskolleg – started a new call for applications. It offers generous fellowships in all fields of the humanities and social sciences for German and Israeli scholars who have completed their Ph.D. degree within the last five years. Fellowships are initially granted for two years and may be renewed further. The Society aims at providing young scholars with…

From 27-30 October ten members of the Zukunftskolleg visited the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where they continued their interdisciplinary workshop “Forgetting”. The first part of the workshop took place in Konstanz in June. Including presentations, text-, film- and panel discussions the notion “Forgetting” was analyzed from different points of view and backgrounds of expertise. For a detailed report see http://www.z…

From September 2012 to January 2013, Senior Fellow Irene Albers spends another stay at the Zukunftskolleg. During her stay, she continues to work on a forthcoming book under the heading of “The passions of the body and the language of the novella. The interaction between emotional physiology and poetry in Romance novellas from Boccaccio to Madame de Lafayette”. Her book aims to address the meaning of certain involuntary physical reactions associated with emotions in the novellas of the Early…

Simon Hanslmayr, collaborating with Karl-Keinz Bäuml from the University of Regensburg and Maria Wimber from the MRC Cambridge, provided evidence that our brain deliberately forgets irrelevant information. Although forgetting normally is described as a failure of memory, it can help us to delete unwanted information in order to discharge brain capacity and to keep our memory flexible.

To explain the formation of new memories it is important to consider the neural synchronization between distant…

From 13-17 October 2012 Simon Hanslmayr and Sarang Dalal, together with their research group, participated in the "Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience 2012" (SfN) in New Orleans. They were involved in five postersessions and three talks. With more than 35.000 attendees the SfN claims to be the largest conference in this field and usually also attracts a lot of public interest.

The Scientific Retreat of Malte Drescher’s research group took place from September 9 to September 11, 2012 as an off-site meeting at the Marbach castle conference and training center. The castle’s Boathouse offered a fantastic change of scenery for the eleven group members during their scientific sessions.

At the current stage the group has to master the step from a junior research group to an established one. While the first generation of PhD researchers is going to leave the group soon,…

After the Recruitment Committee´s first pre-selection, held on 19 September, 153 out of 352 candidates applying for the 2-year and 5-year Fellowships are left. Their applications will now be judged by external referees. Afterwards the Recruitment Committee will take a second pre-selection on 5 November. The best candidates for the 5-year Fellowships will then be invited to the Workshop on Future Research Directions at the University of Konstanz on 10/11 January 2013. In the same meeting the…

Sarang Dalal received a 3-year DFG grant in the amount of 380.558 Euros for his project "Robust Characterization of Hippocampus Dynamics from Magnetoencephalography".

Martin Bruder and Attila Tanyi participated in the 8^th international conference of the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP). It took place in Konstanz from September 17 to 20 under the title “What may we believe? What ought we to do?” and was co-hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Konstanz.  Martin and Attila presented their interdisciplinary project “Overdemanding Consequentialism? An Experimental Approach” in the section on “Normative Ethics, Metaethics, Theory of…

Ulrich Sieberer accepted a visiting professorship in the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. In the winter term 2012/13 he will teach a seminar entitled “Institutional Design in Western Democracies” for Master and PhD students in political science. In cooperation with his mentor Prof. Wolfgang C. Müller, head of the Department of Government and Professor for Democratic Governance, Ulrich Sieberer is currently working on publications about institutional changes in European…