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Past Fellows 2023
Katharina Wilkens is a scholar of religion with a wide range of interests, particularly in the fields of African religions and aesthetics of religion. After graduating in the study of religion, anthropology and Islamic studies at the University of Bayreuth, she taught at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Bayreuth, Zurich, Salzburg and Leipzig. Her PhD project was a case study of Catholic exorcism and healing in Tanzania. She has published on religious healing, spirit possession, the practice of drinking the Quran, travelogues written by Africans and the aesthetics of material texts.
Katharina Wilkens
Katharina Wilkens is a scholar of religion with a wide range of interests, particularly in the fields of African religions and aesthetics of religion. After graduating in the study of religion, anthropology and Islamic studies at the University of Bayreuth, she taught at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Bayreuth, Zurich, Salzburg and Leipzig. Her PhD project was a case study of Catholic exorcism and healing in Tanzania. She has published on religious healing, spirit possession, the practice of drinking the Quran, travelogues written by Africans and the aesthetics of material texts.
The Formation of ‘African’ Culture and Religion in African Socialism
In her current project, Katharina Wilkens studies the formation of religion, both as a discursive category and a social practice, under the auspices of African socialism from the 1950s to 1980s. In opposition to Marxism in the USSR, proponents of non-aligned African socialism insisted on the importance of religion for human society. While leaders such as Leopold Senghor and Julius Nyerere favoured Islam and Christianity, they neglected traditional religions and rather celebrated traditional arts and culture. The project examines global and local factors that contributed to this development.
Please click HERE to watch an Interview with Katharina.
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17 March 2025
Andrea Frohne is professor of African art history and Director of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University, with a joint appointment in the School of Art + Design and of African studies. Her first book is The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space. Her second book titled Contemporary Arts from the Horn of Africa: Encounters Beyond Borders through Conflict, Colonialism, and Modernity is forthcoming. She earned her PhD from Binghamton University (State University of New York). She has taught at Cornell University, Pennsylvania State and Dickinson College.
Currently an associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Arnab is a historian of modern India and the British Empire, with research interests centred around questions of law, labour and the environment. Arnab’s first monograph, Tea Environments and Plantation Culture looked at the monoculture tea enterprise of British east India. This study brought the plant and the plantation together in analysing the praxis and politics of commodity capitalism. His associated research agendas and publications have similarly involved tracing imperial capital, legal regimes and environmental transformations in the British colonial world and the Indian subcontinent.
Katarzyna Puzon is an anthropologist and has conducted ethnographic research primarily in Lebanon and Germany. She has found academic homes in Beirut, Berlin, Edinburgh, London and Warsaw. Most of her work focuses on heritage, memory, mobility, loss and — more recently — sound and empire. Beyond publishing on these topics, she has produced diverse media, including a sound installation at the Amsterdam Museum.
Siddharth Pandey belongs to the Shimla Himalayas and has a PhD in English and Materiality Studies from Cambridge University. He has held fellowships and grants in global history, art history and colonial history at LMU, Yale, the Paul Mellon Centre, and the Charles Wallace India Trust. Pandey’s research interests include fantasy and children’s literature, nature and travel writing, craft theory, folk and popular culture. His first book, 
Hailing from Valparaiso University, Kevin Ostoyich has published on German migration, German-American history, historical pedagogy, the Holocaust and the Shanghai Jews. He has been interviewing Holocaust survivors for many years and is frequently invited to speak about the history of the Shanghai Jews around the world.
Gabriele Klein is a sociologist and dance scholar with a background in the sociology of body, movement and sport as well as dance and performance studies. Her work draws on a range of mixed methods. She has published almost 30 books and numerous articles on body aesthetics, body images and body politics, the globalisation of pop and dance cultures, dance theatre (especially on Pina Bausch), dance as and in protest culture and the transfer of African dance cultures to the global art market. Her current research addresses the tension between globalisation and (re)nationalisation, decolonisation and digitalisation.
Viviana Iacob is a theatre historian. Her work relies on interdisciplinary methodologies and a trans-regional reading of Eastern European theatre during the post-1945 period. Her research focuses on the history of international theatre organisations and their role in the globalisation of state socialist cultures. Between May 2020 and July 2022, she was researched under a Humboldt fellowship. The grant gave her the opportunity to write a monograph that explores the trajectories of Eastern European theatre experts in international organisations. It highlights North-East-South connections and networks that these practitioners created during the Cold War.
Anna Grasskamp is lecturer in art history at the University of St Andrews. She authored Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia. Shells, Bodies, and Materiality (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) and Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe (Reimer, 2019; second edition in preparation). Her articles have appeared in Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Renaissance Studies and other journals. Anna is a subject editor at the review journal SEHEPUNKTE and a member of the editorial boards of the book series Global Epistemics and the Journal for the History of Knowledge.
Born in Kabul, and growing up in Kabul, Delhi and Berlin, Jeanno Gaussi’s interests transcend national borders and genres. Initially focused on film and video art, her work now transcends genre boundaries. Starting from a narrative concept, she creates installations that include video, photography, objects and texts. Her art explores the places where she’s worked, travelled and had meaningful encounters. It engages with remembrance, identity and the social and cultural processes associated with them. She develops projects in relation to the place of their creation, examining the unique aspects of her surroundings.