William Collins Donahue is Professor of German at the University of Notre Dame, USA. His research interests include contemporary European Studies, German literature and film, Holocaust Studies, German Jewish Studies, and art as a form of protest, social engagement and community building. Together with Jens Gurr (University of Duisburg-Essen), he will investigate German and US “memory cultures”, addressing cultural interventions in broader socio-political memory practices.
Fazıl Kayıkçı is Professor of Economics at Yıldız Technical University, Turkey. His academic work focusses on human development, demographic transformation, and labour force participation. Nina Hogrebe (TU Dortmund University) acts as his tandem partner. In their project, they will investigate effects of family migration background and socioeconomic status on students’ success.
Jeff MacSwan is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Maryland, USA. His research programme focuses on the linguistic study of bilingualism, codeswitching (or language alternation) and translanguaging theory. Together with Katja Cantone and Tobias Schroedler (University of Duisburg-Essen), he will pursue a project on German language education policies for newly arrived students.
Benjamin Marent is Associate Professor in Digital Technology at Work at the University of Sussex Business School, UK. His research investigates and informs the digital transformation of health care, with a current focus on telemedicine and the application of conversational artificial intelligence (AI). In his tandem project with Sebastian Merkel (Ruhr University Bochum), he will focus on disruptions and future imaginaries of mental health care against the background of AI applications such as chatbots.
Uroš Matić is an archaeologist and Egyptologist based as a senior lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His main expertise is in war and violence in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian interrelations, settlement archaeology, and gender studies in archaeology. With tandem partner Constance von Rueden (Ruhr University Bochum), he investigates the mechanisms of fear and intimidation in New Kingdom Egyptian palaces (ca. 1550 to 1070 BCE) through an interdisciplinary lens, combining textual analysis, visual studies, spatial analysis, and Actor-Network Theory (ANT).
Nico Orlandi is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA. Their work draws on the history of philosophy and on contemporary research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and in computer science. Together with tandem partner Tobias Schlicht (Ruhr University Bochum), Orlandi will work on a theory of concepts and how we learn them, including concepts of social categories.
Mirzokhid Rakhimov is head of the Contemporary History Center of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. His research interests cover contemporary history as well as international and regional relations in Central Asia. Rakhimov will be working with Michael Kaeding (University of Duisburg-Essen) on a project about relations between the EU and Central Asia and complex regionalism in Eurasia.
Imran Sabir is Associate Professor at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. His research focuses on intergenerational relationships, social inequalities, and the sociology of knowledge. His tandem partner is Martina Brandt (TU Dortmund University). Their research project explores intergenerational support dynamics through the lens of “waithood” – a prolonged period of dependency experienced by young adults during delayed transitions to adulthood.
Tannistha Samanta is a sociologist and an ageing studies scholar at FLAME University, India. One focus of her research is on the intersecting fields of health and ageing, including intergenerational relationships, social capital, consumer cultures, older adult sexualities, and theory development in ageing. Samanta will be working with Cornelius Schubert (TU Dortmund University) on a project about the entanglement of age, gender and (reproductive) technology.
Bariş Uslu is Associate Professor of Higher Education Policy and Management at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. His research focuses on organisational management in universities, sustainable quality management in higher education, changes in academic profession, teacher education policies, digitalisation in education, and AI integration in higher education institutions. In his tandem project with Liudvika Leišytė (TU Dortmund University), Uslu investigates how AI regulations in Europe reflect on higher education institutions.
Detailed information about the Senior Fellows and their projects is available on the College website.
