Current fellows
The fellowship programme is the cornerstone of global dis:connect. Approximately ten scholars come to Munich each year to work on questions of dis:connection together with the global dis:connect team and their peers on site. Each fellow also enjoys the opportunity to host a workshop on a topic of their research. Alongside established, internationally renowned guests, fellows early in their academic or artistic careers also come to share with us. Thus, global dis:connect offers valuable opportunities for up-and-coming researchers in the humanities.
Short-term scholarships furnished by the Munich Centre for Global History supplement this programme. Actively integrating the epistemic potential of the arts is vitally important to global dis:connect. A fundamental assumption is that the arts have the capacity to offer counternarratives to hegemonic discourses, to supposed certainties and to entrenched viewpoints (including scholarly ones). The opportunities — and risks — of artistic research and its critical position towards society and scholarship have barely been incorporated into academic research, its methods, practices and results. Particularly artists who operate on the boundary between the arts and the academy participate as fellows in order to close the gap between academic research and artistic practice.
Arnab Dey
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
Arnab’s project at global dis:connect will examine the ‘invisible’ costs and consequences of mining in the British Empire, especially in India, between 1820-1940. This imperial mainstay and its global dominance have been studied in terms of ‘overground’ activities and material relations of production. This project takes an ‘underground’ approach to highlight the ‘invisible’ and ‘precarious’ in transnational energy regimes. It will focus on obscure — and historiographically ignored – issues of industrial health and ecological ‘ruin’ to connect globalisation, work and the politics of ‘absence’.
Arnab Dey
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.
Arnab’s project at global dis:connect will examine the ‘invisible’ costs and consequences of mining in the British Empire, especially in India, between 1820-1940. This imperial mainstay and its global dominance have been studied in terms of ‘overground’ activities and material relations of production. This project takes an ‘underground’ approach to highlight the ‘invisible’ and ‘precarious’ in transnational energy regimes. It will focus on obscure — and historiographically ignored – issues of industrial health and ecological ‘ruin’ to connect globalisation, work and the politics of ‘absence’.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Andrea Frohne
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.
I’m drafting a book titled Waterways in Contemporary Arts and Visual Culture of the African World. The project pushes the boundaries of African art history, examining geographic features of water in relation to socio-political and geo-political histories and arts of the African world. Diverse waterways affect and inform the arts as a result of slavery, colonialism, migration, global production, piracy and Afro-politan travel. These water networks, tides, currents and fluidities envelop frictions connected to raw materials extraction, transportation and (im)mobility.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Andrea Frohne
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
I’m drafting a book titled Waterways in Contemporary Arts and Visual Culture of the African World. The project pushes the boundaries of African art history, examining geographic features of water in relation to socio-political and geo-political histories and arts of the African world. Diverse waterways affect and inform the arts as a result of slavery, colonialism, migration, global production, piracy and Afro-politan travel. These water networks, tides, currents and fluidities envelop frictions connected to raw materials extraction, transportation and (im)mobility.
Jeanno Gaussi
Artist fellow
Born in Kabul, and growing up in Kabul, Delhi and Berlin, Jeanno’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.
During her fellowship at global dis:connect, Jeanno will reflect and focus on a fragment of her childhood in India. By working with specific material, she reconnects with memories, decontextualising them and connecting them in a new form and narrative.
Click HERE for more info on Jeanno.
Click HERE to send email.
Jeanno Gaussi
artist fellow
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for more info on Jeanno.
Born in Kabul, and growing up in Kabul, Delhi and Berlin, Jeanno’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.
During her fellowship at global dis:connect, Jeanno will reflect and focus on a fragment of her childhood in India. By working with specific material, she reconnects with memories, decontextualising them and connecting them in a new form and narrative.
Anna Grasskamp
Anna Grasskamp is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of 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 Epistemicsand the Journal for the History of Knowledge.
Anna has been the Principal Investigator of two research projects funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, “Ocean Objects: Maritime Material Culture in Southern China from a Global Perspective” (2018-2020) and “Upcycling Hong Kong: The Circular Economy of Recycling Material Culture in Pearl River Delta Jewelry Design” (2020–2022). At global dis:connect she will work on her project “Trash as Treasure: Value Disconnections and the Recycling of Chinese Matter in Art and Design, 1500–2020.”
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Anna Grasskamp
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Anna Grasskamp is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of 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 Epistemicsand the Journal for the History of Knowledge.
Anna has been the Principal Investigator of two research projects funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, “Ocean Objects: Maritime Material Culture in Southern China from a Global Perspective” (2018-2020) and “Upcycling Hong Kong: The Circular Economy of Recycling Material Culture in Pearl River Delta Jewelry Design” (2020–2022). At global dis:connect she will work on her project “Trash as Treasure: Value Disconnections and the Recycling of Chinese Matter in Art and Design, 1500–2020.”
Yolanda Gutiérrez
Artist fellow
Born in Mexico City and living in Hamburg, Yolanda Gutiérrez is a choreographer, video artist, curator and producer whose projects have appeared in a number of international festivals. She has worked with dancers, actors, wrestlers, musicians, DJs, composers, laypeople, children, costume designers and set designers throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, the USA and Africa. Since 2017, she has choreographed the URBAN BODIES PROJECT and DECOLONYCITIES, consisting of decolonising audio walks with dance interventions.
Continuing her investigations into the connections between colonial pasts, architecture and the body, her work at global dis:connect, comprises three modules: a research phase, a period of reflection and a concluding project in Munich. Gutiérrez is looking forward to having the time to reflect and write about her five-year journey of dance interventions in urban spaces.
Click HERE to send email.
Yolanda Gutiérrez
artist fellow
Click HERE to send email.
Born in Mexico City and living in Hamburg, Yolanda Gutiérrez is a choreographer, video artist, curator and producer whose projects have appeared in a number of international festivals. She has worked with dancers, actors, wrestlers, musicians, DJs, composers, laypeople, children, costume designers and set designers throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, the USA and Africa. Since 2017, she has choreographed the URBAN BODIES PROJECT and DECOLONYCITIES, consisting of decolonising audio walks with dance interventions.
Continuing her investigations into the connections between colonial pasts, architecture and the body, her work at global dis:connect, comprises three modules: a research phase, a period of reflection and a concluding project in Munich. Gutiérrez is looking forward to having the time to reflect and write about her five-year journey of dance interventions in urban spaces.
Viviana Iacob
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 organizations and their role in the globalization of state socialist cultures. Between May 2020 and July 2022, she was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship. The grant gave her the opportunity to develop a monograph which explores the trajectories of Eastern European theatre experts in international organizations. It highlights North-East-South connections and networks that these practitioners created during the Cold War.
Her project re-historicises the relationship between globalisation and theatre by analysing the practices of internationalisation and cultural diplomacy deployed by illiberal regimes before and after 1989. The project identifies trans-regional dis:connections that differ from those converging on or emerging from the West. The research combines the study of late-Cold War globalisation processes with a focus on international theatre organisations. By highlighting alternative globalities, the project addresses patterns of integration and disintegration that have been marginalised by entrenched Western-centric discourses on recent histories of theatre.
Click HERE to send email.
Viviana Iacob
Click HERE to send email.
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 organizations and their role in the globalization of state socialist cultures. Between May 2020 and July 2022, she was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship. The grant gave her the opportunity to develop a monograph which explores the trajectories of Eastern European theatre experts in international organizations. It highlights North-East-South connections and networks that these practitioners created during the Cold War.
Her project re-historicises the relationship between globalisation and theatre by analysing the practices of internationalisation and cultural diplomacy deployed by illiberal regimes before and after 1989. The project identifies trans-regional dis:connections that differ from those converging on or emerging from the West. The research combines the study of late-Cold War globalisation processes with a focus on international theatre organisations. By highlighting alternative globalities, the project addresses patterns of integration and disintegration that have been marginalised by entrenched Western-centric discourses on recent histories of theatre.
Gabriele Klein
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.
Her project aims to explore the tension between the decline of in-person communication and the simultaneous expansion of digital communication using contemporary dance as an example. It aims to show how established artistic working methods, forms of communication and collaboration, and performance formats have changed since the Covid pandemic. It asks how this has transformed the perception and the understanding of dance.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Gabriele Klein
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
Her project aims to explore the tension between the decline of in-person communication and the simultaneous expansion of digital communication using contemporary dance as an example. It aims to show how established artistic working methods, forms of communication and collaboration, and performance formats have changed since the Covid pandemic. It asks how this has transformed the perception and the understanding of dance.
Kevin Ostoyich
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.
Kevin’s forthcoming volume, The Herero and the Shanghai Jews: Oral History in Genocide and Refugee Studies, will tell individual stories analyse two little-known groups via oral history. The oral-history approach provides a level of intimacy often missing in standard textbook treatments. The book will explore major themes of commonality and divergence among two groups who have experienced genocide and exile at different points in the twentieth century. The goal is to elucidate how victims relate their experiences across generations, the meanings accorded to the refugee experience, perceptions of commemorative activities and how oral history can illuminate the experiences of genocide and forced migration.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Kevin Ostoyich
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
Kevin’s forthcoming volume, The Herero and the Shanghai Jews: Oral History in Genocide and Refugee Studies, will tell individual stories analyse two little-known groups via oral history. The oral-history approach provides a level of intimacy often missing in standard textbook treatments. The book will explore major themes of commonality and divergence among two groups who have experienced genocide and exile at different points in the twentieth century. The goal is to elucidate how victims relate their experiences across generations, the meanings accorded to the refugee experience, perceptions of commemorative activities and how oral history can illuminate the experiences of genocide and forced migration.
Siddharth Pandey
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, Fossil, explored the Himalayas through a geo-mythological-poetic lens, and is a finalist for the Banff Film and Mountain Literature Festival. His photographic-curatorial work has appeared in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Durham’s Oriental Museum, among other institutions.
Pandey’s project, ‘This fissured land’: ecological aesthetics, dwelling perspective and modernity’s entanglements in the Western Himalayas, studies the Himachal Himalayas as a terrain of belonging and natural-cultural rootedness. It also looks into how this sense of belonging —traditionally associated with a sensitive ecological attunement and aesthetic fulfilment — is threatened by modernity’s multifaceted pressures, which invariably lead to a growing sense of disconnection.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Siddharth Pandey
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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, Fossil, explored the Himalayas through a geo-mythological-poetic lens, and is a finalist for the Banff Film and Mountain Literature Festival. His photographic-curatorial work has appeared in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Durham’s Oriental Museum, among other institutions.
Pandey’s project, ‘This fissured land’: ecological aesthetics, dwelling perspective and modernity’s entanglements in the Western Himalayas, studies the Himachal Himalayas as a terrain of belonging and natural-cultural rootedness. It also looks into how this sense of belonging —traditionally associated with a sensitive ecological attunement and aesthetic fulfilment — is threatened by modernity’s multifaceted pressures, which invariably lead to a growing sense of disconnection.
Katarzyna Puzon
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.
At global dis:connect, Katarzyna is working on her new Daring Sounds project. Analysing connections and disconnections in relation to phonographic archives, this research examines how the archives’ entangled legacies might contribute to current debates on Europe’s colonial history and imperial past. By attending to sound, the project valorises listening as a critical interpretive approach.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Katarzyna Puzon
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
At global dis:connect, Katarzyna is working on her new Daring Sounds project. Analysing connections and disconnections in relation to phonographic archives, this research examines how the archives’ entangled legacies might contribute to current debates on Europe’s colonial history and imperial past. By attending to sound, the project valorises listening as a critical interpretive approach.
Camille Serchuk
Camille is professor of art history at Southern Connecticut State University. She received her doctorate in art history from Yale in 1997, where she focused on images of medieval Paris. Since then, her research has focused primarily on the relationship between painting and mapmaking in late medieval and early modern Europe, with particular attention to the ways that artistic techniques and practices both enhanced and undermined the authority of cartography. The links between cartography and painting in 16th century France are also the subject of her recently completed book manuscript.
Her project, Border Control: Cartography and its Frames in Early Modernity, 1500-1650, explores how frames and border motifs animate early modern cartography and provide an interpretive lens for the mutable image of the world. Because knowledge of geography and sovereign boundaries were constantly in flux, frames enhanced the authority of maps that were almost immediately made obsolete by new exploration or conflict. As a new appraisal of the assertive role of the cartographic frame, the project will recuperate the agency of cartographic ornament, enhancing the legibility of early modern maps.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Camille Serchuk
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Camille is professor of art history at Southern Connecticut State University. She received her doctorate in art history from Yale in 1997, where she focused on images of medieval Paris. Since then, her research has focused primarily on the relationship between painting and mapmaking in late medieval and early modern Europe, with particular attention to the ways that artistic techniques and practices both enhanced and undermined the authority of cartography. The links between cartography and painting in 16th century France are also the subject of her recently completed book manuscript.
Her project, Border Control: Cartography and its Frames in Early Modernity, 1500-1650, explores how frames and border motifs animate early modern cartography and provide an interpretive lens for the mutable image of the world. Because knowledge of geography and sovereign boundaries were constantly in flux, frames enhanced the authority of maps that were almost immediately made obsolete by new exploration or conflict. As a new appraisal of the assertive role of the cartographic frame, the project will recuperate the agency of cartographic ornament, enhancing the legibility of early modern maps.
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.
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.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to send email.
Katharina Wilkens
Click HERE to send email.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
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.
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.
Franziska Windolf
artist fellow
Click HERE to send email.
Soon to be updated.
Franziska Windolf is a visual artist currently exploring 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.
While at global dis:connect, Franziska is working with diverse portable sculptures, whose forms emerge through encounters in public spaces. She creates an imaginary space of remembrance and reflection in which fragmented memories of exiled artists in the city as well as history of Munich find a poetic presence.
Franziska Windolf
Artist fellow
Franziska Windolf is a visual artist currently exploring 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.
While at global dis:connect, Franziska is working with diverse portable sculptures, whose forms emerge through encounters in public spaces. She creates an imaginary space of remembrance and reflection in which fragmented memories of exiled artists in the city as well as history of Munich find a poetic presence.
Soon to be updated.
Click HERE to send email.