Current fellows
The cornerstone of global dis:connect is the fellowship programme, in which approximately ten scholars come to Munich each year. They research dis:connectivity on site and in close contact with the directors and their peers. Fellows also have the opportunity to host workshops on the topics of their research.
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 because they can 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, methods, practices and results.
Ifeoluwa Aboluwade
Ifeoluwa Aboluwade 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).
At gd:c, Ifeoluwa is investigating the histories, patterns and genealogies (dis)connecting Shakespearean drama and early modern West Africa through the topoi of the trickster and warrior. Drawing on diverse texts, the project shows that comparing tricksters and warriors across both literary cultures engenders a deeper understanding of their historical and ongoing entanglements, recasting the significations and transcultural spectres that haunt Shakespeare. It will also illuminate the tension between absence and presence of early modern English performances, especially in terms of race, gender, and class.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Ifeoluwa.
Ifeoluwa Aboluwade
Click HERE to email Ifeoluwa.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Ifeoluwa Aboluwade 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).
At gd:c, Ifeoluwa is investigating the histories, patterns and genealogies (dis)connecting Shakespearean drama and early modern West Africa through the topoi of the trickster and warrior. Drawing on diverse texts, the project shows that comparing tricksters and warriors across both literary cultures engenders a deeper understanding of their historical and ongoing entanglements, recasting the significations and transcultural spectres that haunt Shakespeare. It will also illuminate the tension between absence and presence of early modern English performances, especially in terms of race, gender, and class.
Cathrine Bublatzky
Cathrine Bublatzky 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.
During her fellowship at global dis:connect, Cathrine will research a private archive of personal and political photographs from 20th-century Iranian exiles. Assuming that photographs are mobile, constantly connecting and disconnecting times, places and people, Cathrine is concerned with politically sensitive photographs from the archive of an Iranian exiled artist and activist, and the questions of why and how photography functions as a central medium for global communication, information and memory processes as well as identification and belonging in the exiles’ everyday. She inquires how archives and photography contain traces of time and belonging for their audiences in and beyond exile as a cultural field of simultaneously dis:connective and interruptive social interactions.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Cathrine.
Cathrine Bublatzky
Click HERE to email Cathrine.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Cathrine Bublatzky is a media anthropologist and senior lecturer at the University of Tübingen.
She was formerly assistant professor at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies.
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 has been speaker of the DFG Network Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents (2018–2022) and author of 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.
During her fellowship at global dis:connect, Cathrine will research a private contemporary exile archive of personal and political photographs from 20th-century Iran. Assuming that photographs are mobile, not stable, constantly connecting and disconnecting times, places and people, Cathrine is concerned with politically sensitive photographs from the archive of an Iranian exiled artist and activist, and the questions of why and how photography functions as a central medium for global communication, information and memory processes as well as identification and belonging in the exilic everyday. She inquires how archives and photography contain traces of time and belonging for their audiences in and beyond exile as a cultural field of simultaneously dis:connective and inter:ruptive social interactions.
Jeanno Gaussi
artist fellow
Born in Kabul, and having grown 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 email Jeanno.
Jeanno Gaussi
artist fellow
Click HERE to email Jeanno.
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.
Michael Goebel
Michael Goebel 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.
During his fellowship at gd:c, he’s investigating the interrelationship between globalisation and inequality in Latin American and Southeast Asian port cities, particularly in the late-nineteenth century. His key interest is how the global development of capitalism and imperialism intersected with local socio-economic transformations in urban space, focusing on the interplay between ethnicity, migration and real-estate markets. His research thus connects to scholarship about segregation, but seeks to expand its purview beyond its customary focus on the North Atlantic.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Michael.
Michael Goebel
Click HERE to email Michael.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Michael Goebel 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.
During his fellowship at gd:c, he’s investigating the interrelationship between globalisation and inequality in Latin American and Southeast Asian port cities, particularly in the late-nineteenth century. His key interest is how the global development of capitalism and imperialism intersected with local socio-economic transformations in urban space, focusing on the interplay between ethnicity, migration and real-estate markets. His research thus connects to scholarship about segregation, but seeks to expand its purview beyond its customary focus on the North Atlantic.
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 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.
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 email Viviana.
Viviana Iacob
Click HERE to email Viviana.
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.
Judd C. Kinzley
Judd Kinzley 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.
Judd’s project at gd:c focuses on the legacies of Allied wartime oil exports to China, and how brought China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the United States and the European imperial powers together. Support of China’s war effort through deliveries of petroleum products relied on the transformation of global petroleum infrastructures that had long connected petroleum-producing regions to imperial metropoles, mostly in Western Europe. Oil transports from Burma and Iran into China during the war served as a detour, an “interruption” that bound the Middle East to the United States and East Asia, reshaping global energy flows.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Judd.
Judd C. Kinzley
Click HERE to email Judd.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Judd Kinzley 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.
Judd’s project at gd:c focuses on the legacies of Allied wartime oil exports to China, and how brought China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the United States and the European imperial powers together. Support of China’s war effort through deliveries of petroleum products relied on the transformation of global petroleum infrastructures that had long connected petroleum-producing regions to imperial metropoles, mostly in Western Europe. Oil transports from Burma and Iran into China during the war served as a detour, an “interruption” that bound the Middle East to the United States and East Asia, reshaping global energy flows.
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 email Gabriele.
Gabriele Klein
Click HERE to email Gabriele.
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.
Nic Leonhardt
Nic Leonhardt is a theatre scholar and writer commenting on global theatre history; media, popular and visual cultures; and archiving and curating theatrical history. She has served as a senior researcher and fellow in multiple projects. Her latest monograph, Theatre Across Oceans. Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange (1890-1925), was published in 2021. She edits Global Theatre Histories and created the theatre history podcast Theatrescapes.
Nic is co-president of SIBMAS. Together with artist Reza Nassrollahi, she runs the global art and charity project 1001SOUL.
At global dis:connect, Nic will address the challenges of global theatre histories and the difficulties in understanding and writing a globally interconnected history of the performing arts. She will interrogate the gap between global and entangled histories, which are both shared and divided. This project invokes connections, disconnections and detours extending across research, knowledge transfer, methodology and epistemology.
Her research will cover two case studies on female theatre practitioners and networks in Europe and the USA (early 20th century) and in Iran (1940s and 1950s).
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Nic.
Nic Leonhardt
Click HERE to email Nic.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Nic Leonhardt is a theatre scholar and writer commenting on global theatre history; media, popular and visual cultures; and archiving and curating theatrical history. She has served as a senior researcher and fellow in multiple projects. Her latest monograph, Theatre Across Oceans. Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange (1890-1925), was published in 2021. She edits Global Theatre Histories and created the theatre history podcast Theatrescapes.
Nic is co-president of SIBMAS. Together with artist Reza Nassrollahi, she runs the global art and charity project 1001SOUL.
At global dis:connect, Nic will address the challenges of global theatre histories and the difficulties in understanding and writing a globally interconnected history of the performing arts. She will interrogate the gap between global and entangled histories, which are both shared and divided. This project invokes connections, disconnections and detours extending across research, knowledge transfer, methodology and epistemology.
Her research will cover two case studies on female theatre practitioners and networks in Europe and the USA (early 20th century) and in Iran (1940s and 1950s).
Ayala Levin
Ayala Levin is an associate professor of architectural history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayala specialises in architecture and urban planning in postcolonial African states with interest in the production of architectural knowledge as part of north-south or south-south exchange. She authored Architecture and Development: Israeli Construction in Sub Saharan Africa and the Settler Colonial Imagination (Duke University Press 2022), and she co-edited Architecture in Development: Systems and the Emergence of the Global South (Routledge 2022).
At global dis:connect, Ayala will research how U.S. planners sought to reorganise rural spaces in post-independence African states to curb urban migration. This project reframes conventional accounts of Third World urbanisation by directing attention to the entangled phenomenon of ruralisation, namely the modernisation of the countryside. It asks how the countryside was physically transformed to elevate standards of living, and how this transformation was employed to eradicate colonial precepts that associated modernity and social mobility exclusively with the city.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Ayala.
Ayala Levin
Click HERE to email Ayala.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Ayala Levin is an associate professor of architectural history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayala specialises in architecture and urban planning in postcolonial African states with interest in the production of architectural knowledge as part of north-south or south-south exchange. She authored Architecture and Development: Israeli Construction in Sub Saharan Africa and the Settler Colonial Imagination (Duke University Press 2022), and she co-edited Architecture in Development: Systems and the Emergence of the Global South (Routledge 2022).
At global dis:connect, Ayala will research how U.S. planners sought to reorganise rural spaces in post-independence African states to curb urban migration. This project reframes conventional accounts of Third World urbanisation by directing attention to the entangled phenomenon of ruralisation, namely the modernisation of the countryside. It asks how the countryside was physically transformed to elevate standards of living, and how this transformation was employed to eradicate colonial precepts that associated modernity and social mobility exclusively with the city.
David Motadel
David Motadel is an associate professor of international history at the LSE. A former Gates Scholar at Cambridge, he has held visiting positions at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Sciences Po and the Sorbonne. His articles have been published in numerous academic journals, including Past & Present, The American Historical Review and the Annales. His reviews and essays on current affairs have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, among others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
During his year at gd:c, David is working on a global history of Europe’s empires around the Second World War, 1935-1948, exploring the history of the war in the imperial world, its impact on colonial subjects; the history of the colonial soldiers who fought in Europe’s armies; the history of anti-colonial movements during the war, from the Viet Minh to the Quit India movement; and the war’s impact on the end of empire and twentieth-century world order. Drawing on multilingual literature and sources from five continents, the book provides a truly global view of the most cataclysmic conflict in human history.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email David.
David Motadel
Click HERE to email David.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
David Motadel is an associate professor of international history at the LSE. A former Gates Scholar at Cambridge, he has held visiting positions at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Sciences Po and the Sorbonne. His articles have been published in numerous academic journals, including Past & Present, The American Historical Review and the Annales. His reviews and essays on current affairs have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, among others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
During his year at gd:c, David is working on a global history of Europe’s empires around the Second World War, 1935-1948, exploring the history of the war in the imperial world, its impact on colonial subjects; the history of the colonial soldiers who fought in Europe’s armies; the history of anti-colonial movements during the war, from the Viet Minh to the Quit India movement; and the war’s impact on the end of empire and twentieth-century world order. Drawing on multilingual literature and sources from five continents, the book provides a truly global view of the most cataclysmic conflict in human history.
Sabrina Moura
Sabrina Moura is a teacher, researcher and curator from Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Campinas. She authored Arqueologia da Criação [Archeology of Creation, 2022] — a book on the work of Brazilian artist Rossini Perez — and edited Southern Panoramas: Perspectives for other geographies of thought (2015), which presents historical and artistic perspectives on the Global South. Her work has featured in Mousse Magazine, Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, Stedelijk Studies Journal, African Art, Critical Internventions, 3rd Text Africa, among others.
At global dis:connect Sabrina is developing Cabinet Exotica Performing Absent Agencies from the Dawn of Natural Sciences, a project that focuses on contemporary visual and performative strategies. It is pursues the restitution of absent agencies in the history of the natural sciences. This research analyses museological and display policies around collections that were gathered during 19th-century expeditions of exploration and are held in Munich institutions, integrating decolonial theories, exhibition histories and museum studies.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Sabrina.
Sabrina Moura
Click HERE to email Sabrina.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Sabrina Moura is a teacher, researcher and curator from Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Campinas. She authored Arqueologia da Criação [Archeology of Creation, 2022] — a book on the work of Brazilian artist Rossini Perez — and edited Southern Panoramas: Perspectives for other geographies of thought (2015), which presents historical and artistic perspectives on the Global South. Her work has featured in Mousse Magazine, Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, Stedelijk Studies Journal, African Art, Critical Internventions, 3rd Text Africa, among others.
At global dis:connect Sabrina is developing Cabinet Exotica Performing Absent Agencies from the Dawn of Natural Sciences, a project that focuses on contemporary visual and performative strategies. It is pursues the restitution of absent agencies in the history of the natural sciences. This research analyses museological and display policies around collections that were gathered during 19th-century expeditions of exploration and are held in Munich institutions, integrating decolonial theories, exhibition histories and museum studies.
Günther Sandner
Günther Sandner is a political scientist and historian. He works as a research fellow at the Institute Vienna Circle (University of Vienna) and teaches civic education extramurally. His research includes the history of logical empiricism and Isotype. His recent publications include Weltsprache ohne Worte. Rudolf Modley, Margaret Mead und das Glyphs-Projekt (2022); Logical Empiricism, Life Reform and the German Youth Movement (ed. with Christian Damböck and Meike Werner. 2022); and History and Legacy of Isotype (with Christopher Burke, forthcoming 2023).
Günther’s project, Following Isotype: visual languages and universal symbols in the decades after 1945, deals with projects that aimed to overcome the active absence of a universal language and to establish one with the help of pictures, graphics, symbols and pictograms. Its focus is on the 1950s and 1960s. Three visual language models that interacted with each other to varying degrees are examined as examples: Marie Neurath’s Isotype (after Otto Neurath’s death), Margaret Mead’s and Rudolf Modley’s Glyphs and Charles Bliss’ Semantography.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Click HERE to email Günther.
Günther Sandner
Click HERE to email Günther.
Click HERE for a list of publications.
Günther Sandner is a political scientist and historian. He works as a research fellow at the Institute Vienna Circle (University of Vienna) and teaches civic education extramurally. His research includes the history of logical empiricism and Isotype. His recent publications include Weltsprache ohne Worte. Rudolf Modley, Margaret Mead und das Glyphs-Projekt (2022); Logical Empiricism, Life Reform and the German Youth Movement (ed. with Christian Damböck and Meike Werner. 2022); and History and Legacy of Isotype (with Christopher Burke, forthcoming 2023).
Günther’s project, Following Isotype: visual languages and universal symbols in the decades after 1945, deals with projects that aimed to overcome the active absence of a universal language and to establish one with the help of pictures, graphics, symbols and pictograms. Its focus is on the 1950s and 1960s. Three visual language models that interacted with each other to varying degrees are examined as examples: Marie Neurath’s Isotype (after Otto Neurath’s death), Margaret Mead’s and Rudolf Modley’s Glyphs and Charles Bliss’ Semantography.