We welcome Eduardo Luersen to the Zukunftskolleg

Eduardo Luersen is one of our new Postdoctoral Fellows from the 16th call for applications for fellowships. He has started his fellowship in June and is affiliated with the Department of Literature.

Eduardo completed his PhD in the Communication Sciences programme of Unisinos University in São Leopoldo, Brazil. During his PhD, he also had the opportunity to do a short research stay (5 months) at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.

“The defense of my PhD dissertation was scheduled for early March 2020, but due to the pandemic the defense had to be postponed to July 2020”, reports Eduardo. “As the opportunities and conditions to conduct research on an international level were too uncertain at the time, I started preparing a renewed research agenda for my first postdoc project – fortunately, this project would later be selected by the scientific committee of the Zukunftskolleg”.

Besides that, he worked translating articles from prominent researchers in the field of Media Studies in order to have them published and available to readers of Portuguese language. He also coordinated an interdisciplinary (remote) study group called “Technopolity: Design, Infrastructure, Geopolitics”. The weekly meetings gathered young Brazilian scholars from the fields of International Relations, Design, Philosophy, Arts, Communication, and Literature to debate the tensions and overlaps of the technical and aesthetical dimensions of digital media with issues of governance and political geography.

His current project - entitled “Cloud gaming atlas: from Earth's metabolism to the longing for radiant infrastructures”- is aimed at the transnational telecommunication infrastructures development to support cloud gaming platforms. “What interests me more specifically is observing how these infrastructures are intertwined with the management of natural resources in local and wider environmental settings. With the project, I am seeking to explore to what extent media are ingrained within Earth systems, while questioning at the same time the regimes of visibility/invisibility of these material infrastructures. I believe these questions are important not only for their epistemological value. It might be particularly significant to assess how the environmental and aesthetic dimensions of media phenomena intermingle in a time when the so-called creative industries are migrating to a platform model based on high energy-demanding streaming services.”

Moreover, Eduardo is associated with and nurtures various forms of research cooperation – mostly about the aesthetic dimension of gaming – with two particular research groups, Audiovisualities and Technoculture (TCAv) from Unisinos University, and Leuphana University’s Gamification Lab. From this term onwards he will also start collaborating with the Department of Literature, Arts and Media Studies of the University of Konstanz, and more specifically with the university’s GameLab.

We wish him good luck and a great time at the Zukunftskolleg!