In
Past Fellows 2024
Matthias is a historical sociologist specialising in empires, colonialism and nation-state formation and is a senior lecturer at the University of Basel. In 2017, his dissertation received the Erasmus Prize for the Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2019, he joined the Postdoc Network of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University. He was a visiting scholar at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin, the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan. In 2020, he co-founded the Historical Sociology Working Group in the German Sociological Association.
Matthias Leanza
Matthias is a historical sociologist specialising in empires, colonialism and nation-state formation and is a senior lecturer at the University of Basel. In 2017, his dissertation received the Erasmus Prize for the Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2019, he joined the Postdoc Network of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University. He was a visiting scholar at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin, the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan. In 2020, he co-founded the Historical Sociology Working Group in the German Sociological Association.
A Nation Forged by Empire: The Hidden Legacy of German Colonialism
During his fellowship at global dis:connect, Matthias will complete his current book project on the legacy of German colonialism. Drawing on a wide range of sources from European and African archives, the study shows how and why the German overseas empire helped consolidate the nascent German nation-state. Germany soon lost its colonies, but their effects on the country persisted, leaving a complex legacy.
Have a look at Matthias's research poster about his project.
Please click HERE to watch an interview with Matthias.
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13 February 2025
Yvonne is a professor of Eastern European history and director of the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies at Halle University. Her research focuses on Russian imperial history in comparative perspective, Jewish history of Eastern Europe, and Polish history through the ages. She is especially interested in the intersections between historiography, philology, ethnography and law. In her publications she has explored migrations, interreligious relations, urban history, legal history, anthropology and the history of knowledge.
Judd is a professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research treats borderlands, materiality and natural resources. He is currently working on the transnational exchange of Chinese raw materials for cash, weapons and industrial goods during World War II. This work reveals the transnational networks that developed to finance, produce and transport such resources. These trans-Pacific networks channelled objects in both directions during the war and served as the blueprint of a new postwar international order.
Judd works in both Chinese and English, with experience researching in several archives in China, Taiwan, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Valeska is a professor at the University of Vienna. She has led an Emmy Noether Research Group and has been a fellow at the German Historical Institute London. She is particularly interested in the mutual interdependence of opening and closure. More specifically, she has worked on mobility and migration, on epidemics and international health policy, and on education and literacy training. She has authored Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and co-edited Global Publics: Their Power and their Limits.
Michael is the Einstein Professor of Global History and co-director of the Frankreich-Zentrum at Freie Universität Berlin. He earned his Ph.D. from University College London (2006) and in 2018–21 was the Pierre du Bois Chair Europe and the World at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Originally an intellectual historian of Latin America, his 2015 book Anti-Imperial Metropolis awakened a growing interest in urban history and, more recently, social and economic history. He is currently the principal investigator of the SNSF-funded project Patchwork Cities.
Joël focuses on West and Central Africa in the 20th century, particularly colonialism, governmentality, humanitarianism and the production of power as framed by praxis theory and science and technology studies. His publications inquire into social classifications produced by state institutions, international governmentality and private corporations. He further engages with the theory of global history, global norms and colonialism. His last book, Les humanités humanitaires. Manuel d’autodéfense à l’usage des volontaires (2023), reflects on the practical use of the humanities.
Cathrine is a media anthropologist and senior lecturer at the University of Tübingen. She researches diaspora and exile, archives, visual and digital media cultures, photography, art, activism, and the aesthetics and politics of belonging throughout Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. Cathrine authored Along the Indian Highway: An Ethnography of an International Travelling Exhibition, a monograph published by Routledge. Her project Contemporary Photography as Cultural Praxis of Iranians in the European Diaspora, which she will continue at global dis:connect, was awarded a scholarship by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation.
Roii is a social historian of 19th and 20th-century Germany and Central Europe and their colonial entanglements. He is a postdoctoral lead researcher at the Religion and Politics Cluster of Excellence at the University of Münster. Ball earned his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2021 with a dissertation on the social dynamics and bureaucratic practices of German colonisation in the Polish provinces of Prussia before WWI (Advisor: David Sabean).
Ifeoluwa is a literary scholar with a background in imperial and literary history, early modern English theatre, critical digital humanities, (trans)cultural translation and adaptation, black diaspora studies, postcolonial literary criticism, and gender and intersectionality. She works at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and is a lecturer at the University of Bayreuth. Ifeoluwa has received many international awards and fellowships, such as Fulbright and DAAD scholarships, most recently receiving the Shakespeare Association of America-Folger Shakespeare Library Short Term Fellowship (2022/2023).
Julian is an artist and curator. He is the current artistic director of the