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Jie-Hyun Lim takes up fellowship

In March Jie-Hyun Lim commenced his term as a fellow at global dis:connect. Welcome. Jie-Hyun Lim holds the CIPSH Chair of Global Easts and is a founding director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University. At gd:c Jie-Hyun will work on multilingual versions of victimhood nationalism as a conceptual tool to illustrate competing memories of victimhood in the postwar Vergangenheitsbewältigung across Europe and East Asia. Continue Reading

Alumna but not forgotten: an interview with Katarzyna Puzon

katarzyna puzon
 

When were at global dis:connect, and what did you work on while here?

Image: Iveta Rysava/PolasBerlin

I was based at gd:c from July 2022 to June 2023, and my project was – and still is – concerned with scientific sound archives and how to deal with their legacy and ways of producing knowledge. Its focus and scope strongly resonate with my long-standing interest in temporality and the interplay of heritage, science and art, including in museums, exhibition spaces, urban sites and broader collaborative endeavours. The project is deeply rooted in my anthropological thinking, but it crosses disciplinary boundaries, drawing on critical heritage studies, sound studies, history of science and STS approaches. And it has a practical bent.

Where do you work now and are you still dealing with dis:connectivity?

After my fellowship, I returned to Berlin. One of the projects I was involved in last autumn concerned communicating science through sound and exhibiting (spoken) language. This was in the framework of the Nach der Natur (After Nature) exhibition. I was invited to comment on it and write about its media section, together with a colleague who is a musicologist and with whom I have been in dialogue for years. In this particular case, dis:connectivity was rather absent (an intriguing figure of speech). However, I have always worked on paradoxes and contradictions, as many anthropologists do, which seems inevitable when one needs to engage intensively with other people while doing ethnographic fieldwork in a ‘foreign’ context. In many respects, dis:connectivity fits into the paradoxical paradigm that I develop in my work. Analytically speaking, I find it more productive to use this tool in my research on scientific sound archives than in, for example, my book on Beirut.

What text – whether a book or article – have you read recently that particularly impressed you?

I can’t recall any text that has impressed me recently. Though I have been rereading Michail Bachtin’s The Dialogic Imagination and rethinking his ideas of chronotope and polyphony.

Which song could be the soundtrack for your time at gdc?

It is hard to pick just one piece, but it could be Thunder Continues in the Aftermath by Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet. https://youtu.be/38o6rozmYbI

Given the choice of anyone dead or alive, or even a fictional character, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

I would love to have dinner with Ursula K. Le Guin, a writer who passed away in 2018. Her evocative thought experiments deftly transcend conventions and genres (even if she is commonly classified as a speculative fiction or science fiction writer), while engaging with social, political and environmental issues. We would most likely talk about ‘what if’, temporality and technology, and reflect on how ‘the word for world is forest’ (inspired by the title of one of her books). If gd:c could fulfill my request and arrange a dinner with her for me, that would be a nice treat. A séance might do the trick. Continue Reading

Andreas Greiner takes up fellowship

In November Andreas Greiner commenced his term as a associated fellow at global dis:connect. Welcome. Andreas Greiner 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. At gd:c Andreas is studying intercontinental civil air routes between 1919 and 1947. The project examines the codification of aerospace as well as the diplomatic and economic factors driving intercontinental airway extension. Continue Reading

Yvonne Kleinmann joins global dis:connect

A warm welcome to our new fellow Yvonne Kleinmann who joins global dis:connect in early October. Yvonne Kleinmann is a professor of Eastern European history and director of the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies at Halle University Her project at gd:c, Communicating Constitutions: A Cultural and Entangled History of Poland’s Basic Orders, deals with Polish constitutional history from the 14th century to the present from the angle of cultural history and (transnational) entanglement.   Continue Reading

Welcome, Matthias Leanza!

In early October, Matthias Leanza joins global dis:connect as a new fellow. Welcome to Munich, Matthias! Matthias Leanza is a historical sociologist specialising in empires, colonialism and nation-state formation and is a senior lecturer at the University of Basel. 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. Continue Reading

Valeska Huber takes up fellowship

In October Valeska Huber commenced her term as a fellow at global dis:connect. Welcome. Valeska Huber 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. During her fellowship at global dis:connect, she will work on a monograph about the 20th-century dream of universal literacy, tracing the Each One Teach One method propagated by US missionary Frank C. Laubach and applied around the globe from the Philippines to Cuba and Brazil. Continue Reading

Joël Glasman joins global dis:connect

A warm welcome to our new guest Joël Glasman who joins global dis:connect in october.

Joël is a Professor of African History at University of Bayreuth. He 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.

Joël’s project At gd:c, Empire of waste, looks at imperialism as a regime of waste built on material exploitation and racial inequalities. Immobilisation, hiding and destruction of waste played a crucial role in imperial domination, as indicated by recent research on toxicity, waste dumping and radioactivity in Africa.

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David Motadel takes up fellowship

In September David Motadel commenced his term as a fellow at global dis:connect. Welcome. 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. At gd:c he 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. Continue Reading

Günther Sandner joins global dis:connect

A warm welcome to our new fellow Günther Sandner who joins global dis:connect in early September. 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 project at gd:c, 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. Continue Reading

Welcome, Ayala Levin!

In early September, Ayala Levin joins global dis:connect as a new fellow. Welcome to Munich, Ayala! 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.   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. Continue Reading