In
Past Fellows
Nadia is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad: Trajectories of artists and artworks in/from Lebanon since 1943 (LAWHA), based at the Orient-Institut Beirut. Her publications treat cultural politics, artistic practices and the circulation of knowledge, including The Art Salon in the Arab Region: Politics of Taste Making, co-edited with Monique Bellan (2018), and The Syria-Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East (2013/2015). She holds a DPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony’s College, Oxford.
LAWHA examines the forces that have shaped the emergence of a professional field of art in Lebanon in local, regional and global contexts.
Have a look at Nadia’s research poster about her project and find out more about the workshop Nadia organzied during her fellowship together with Claudia Cendales Paredes.
Here you can watch an interview with her on her project at gd:c.
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Nadia von Maltzahn
Nadia is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad: Trajectories of artists and artworks in/from Lebanon since 1943 (LAWHA), based at the Orient-Institut Beirut. Her publications treat cultural politics, artistic practices and the circulation of knowledge, including The Art Salon in the Arab Region: Politics of Taste Making, co-edited with Monique Bellan (2018), and The Syria-Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East (2013/2015). She holds a DPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony’s College, Oxford.
LAWHA examines the forces that have shaped the emergence of a professional field of art in Lebanon in local, regional and global contexts.
Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad (LAWHA). Trajectories of artists and artworks in/from Lebanon since 1943
At gd:c, Nadia is writing a book on LAWHA’s main research questions. Since the project relates context and artistic production at home and abroad, the question of connections and ruptures between these poles is an integral part of the analysis. By studying the nuances of artists’ migratory trajectories, networks and creation, she is analysing rather than presuming links and connections, paying close attention to the experiences of artists.Contact
16 April 2025
Işıl holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a Ph.D. in communication from Istanbul Bilgi University. Işıl has worked at the Berlin University of Arts (UdK) since 2017 and was the co-winner of Turkey’s Full Art Prize in 2012. She founded the other garden, a research space that focuses on ecology, diversity, inclusivity and radical care in the UdK.
Işıl has participated in numerous international exhibitions and residencies and has published widely. Recent exhibitions and venues include Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, La Casa Encendida, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography (2022), and the 11th Istanbul Biennial.
Işıl joined global dis:connect as an artist fellow.
On Tuesday, 12 November 2024 (7:00 - 8:30 p.m.) the LMU’s public lecture series adressed the complex topic of “
Claiton is an associate professor of history at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (UFFS), Brazil, with a PhD in the history of science. In 2023, he published The Making of Modern Agriculture: Nelson Rockefeller’s American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA) in Latin America (1946-1968), addressing U.S. private diplomacy during the Cold War. He also co-edited The Age of the Soybean (White Horse Press, 2022) with Claudio de Majo.
Paula is an assistant professor of international history at the Fundação Getulio Vargas. Her manuscript, Brokering Capital: Latin American Public Credit and the Making of Global Finance, 1852-1914, examines how Argentina‘s and Brazil’s trajectories as sovereign debtors shaped the regimes of sovereign creditworthiness that contributed to making finance global. She has conducted research in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is interested in the global history of capitalism, histories of quantification, information and the future.
Paula joined global dis:connect funded by the 
Ross is a researcher at the 
Andreas is a fellow at the German Historical Institute Washington. He specialises in infrastructure networks and their spatiality and materiality in the 19th and 20th centuries. He received his PhD from ETH Zurich. Before joining the GHI in 2021, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the EUI in Florence. His first monograph Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914: Tensions of Transport (2022) explores the role of caravan transport and human porterage in colonial East Africa, unveiling the resilience of precolonial structures in the era of ‘high imperialism’.
Andreas joined global dis:connect funded by the German Historical Institute Washington.
Franziska is a visual artist who explores the performative potential of patchwork. She deconstructs the patchwork into ‘patch’ and ‘work’, understanding these terms as fragments and action in public or gallery spaces. For her, the artwork is a catalyst, a method of investigation, a means of connecting to people and a way to explore exile and commemoration. By contesting prevalent relationships and hierarchies and by reassembling research findings, Franziska conceives the artwork as inconsistent, absurd and yet within reach.
Katharina 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.
Andrea 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.