Current News

Acting on behalf of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft of the University of Konstanz,
the Zukunftskolleg awards the Manfred Ulmer Scholarship to doctoral students every year.
The programme is open to doctoral students of all disciplines and pays 1,000 euros per month
over six months. It enables the scholars to bridge a financial gap between their studies and
their doctoral phase.

This year's winner of the Manfred Ulmer Scholarship is Nicole Rettig.

Nicole Rettig studied German and…

Between May and July 2010 the Zukunftskolleg could welcome three up-and-coming researchers as new Fellows. They all had succeeded in the latest procedure for Fellowship grants.

Eleanor Coghill is a linguist who worked previously within the AHRC-„North Eastern Neo-Aramaic Project“ at the University of Cambridge. Her project at the Department of Linguistics focuses on „The morpho-syntax of Neo-Aramaic dialects in an areal perspective“.

Psychologist Simon Hanslmayr will perform his project on…

Reinventing the World's Second Oldest Profession: Diplomacy
in the 21st Century

Jorge Heine

Lecture held on Wednesday, June 30, 4:15 p.m., lecture hall A 702

In the 21st century, the ancient craft of diplomacy is undergoing radical changes. Diplomats must now engage a vastly larger number of players in host countries, as the age-old “club model” of diplomacy gives way to a less hierarchical “network model.” Although the environment in which diplomacy is practised has changed drastically,…

The Zukunftskolleg Celebration in the press review of the University of Konstanz can be found here:

The press release about the Zukunftskolleg celebration on 23 June 2010 can be found here .

Karsten Lambers, Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg and member of the Department of Computer and Information Science was appointed as a Junior Professor (W 1) of Information Processing in Geoarchaeology at the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies of the University of Bamberg.

The FAZ of today has published an article by Heike Schmoll about the University of Konstanz and the Zukunftskolleg (see page 1 in the press review of the university) .

Professor Brett Clementz and Professor Jennifer McDowell both work at the Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, USA. Zukunftskolleg alumna Johanna Kißler nominated them for a Senior Fellowship. More

The Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz will celebrate its move into the new Y2 building on 23 June 2010. You can find the actual programme here. Please note that the fireworks will start at 22:15 h and not at 21:30 h as indicated in the poster.

Wednesday, 12. Mai 2010, 13:00-14:30, Y 311

Prof. Melissa S. Anderson (University of Minnesota)
Dr. Diana Schmidt-Pfister (University of Konstanz, EXC16)

The two presenters address the same questions based on their different research projects:
-- How do competition and cooperation manifest themselves in the daily work of researchers?
-- What are their (positive and negative) effects?
-- Is ethical and good research conduct in danger?
-- How have research practices been changing at all?
-- How…

An international conference on junior researchers will take place on 23 and 24 September 2010 in Hamburg. It is organised by the Koerber Foundation an the Konstanz Science Forum of the University of Konstanz. More…

The Biologist Sebastian Kirschner from the Max Plank Institute of Evolutional Entropology in Leipzig will talk about the "Social Origins of Musik" and will present very interesting behavior studies concerning musical experience of children in the early years of life. Sebastian is a graduate student of Michael Tomaselo, famous for his research in social cognition, social learning and communication. Poster

The talk will take place on thursday, May 6th in R 512 from 6.00 PM to 8.00 PM. Since this…

Gunnar Jeschke is Full Professor for Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He is an outstanding scientist not only in his own research but also in field of Physical Chemistry at large. His work has made significant contributions to the development of an important spectroscopic technique, the pulsed ESR. His book on pulsed ESR which has been edited by him in 2001 has developed as the standard work for this topic. Due to his work the modern ESR techniques hold an important…

Jean-Pierre Tignol is Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He is an outstanding mathematician, working in algebra, more specifically in the field of quadratic forms and linear algebraic groups. His scientific quality is certified by a publication list comprising more than 80 research articles and several books. Jean-Pierre Tignol has collaborated with most other mathematicians in this research area. In the early 1990s, Tignol initiated the currently very active topic of…

A portrait of the philosopher and Zukunftskolleg Fellow Franz Huber has been published in the magazine "forschung 1/2010" of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The article entitled "Rising Star" can be found on page 15 in

http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/forschung_magazin/forschung_2010_01.pdf

In der Kategorie Sachbuch/ Essayistik entschied sich die Jury, den Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse an den 60jährigen Ulrich Raulff für sein Werk “Kreis ohne Meister. Stefan Georges Nachleben. Eine abgründige Geschichte“ (Verlag C.H.Beck) zu vergeben. Ulrich Raulff ist Mitglied des wissenschaftlichen Beirats des Zukunftskollegs. Mehr Informationen finden sie hier: …

Irene Albers is a Professor of Romance Philology and General and Comparative Literary Studies at the FU Berlin since 2004. The alumna of the University of Konstanz is one of the most distinguished and creative Romance studies scholar's of her generation. Her work not only covers the diversity of Romance literatures from the early modern period, on the one hand, and of the 19th and 20th centuries, on the other, but comprises a broad range of literary-theoretical and cultural-theoretical topics…

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Women's Affairs of the University of Konstanz the Akademie am See:"Brain Gain" is held on 29/30 July 2010. More information is available here.

Jonathan Weisberg is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is an outstanding scholar in the areas of Philosophy of Science and Logic and a specialist in Epistemology and Decision Theory. For his excellent work in the field of Formal Epistemology he was awarded with the renowned Rutgers Young Epistemologist Prize.

During his visit in Konstanz in March 2010, Jonathan Weisberg will collaborate with the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group of…

The annual report of the Zukunftskolleg “Progress 2009” has been released in February 2010 and is available here.

The conference “Changing People, Changing Brains” on April 8-10, 2010 in Konstanz is co-organised by Iris-Tatjana Kolassa and Nathan Weisz, both Fellows of the Zukunftskolleg, together with Zukunftskolleg Alumna Johanna Kissler. It is co-funded by the Zukunftskolleg. For more information please visit

http://www.psychologie.uni-konstanz.de/abteilungen/clinicalpsychology/changing/

The Zukunftskolleg will host the annual University Day of the Hegau-Bodensee-Seminar on 26 February 2010. The Hegau-Bodensee-Seminar has been promoting particularly interested lower secondary (Sec I) through to upper secondary (Sec II) school pupils and students enrolled at general grammar schools in the administrative district of Konstanz. Besides working groups and presentations, a University Day is held once a year. Sixty pupils are expected to attend this year with whom Gunhild Berg, David…

Between December 2009 and the beginning of February 2010 the Zukunftskolleg could welcome four up-and-coming researchers as new Fellows. They all had succeded in the latest procedure for Fellowship grants. The Call for Applications had concentrated on the two key topics ‘Foundations of Social Justice’ and ‘Mixed Feelings’.

Martin Bruder is a psychologist who was previously a scientific project manager at the Head Office of the German Council of Science and Humanities in Cologne. His project at…

In January 2010 a new era started for the Zukunftskolleg: the shortly erected building Y 2 is ready for moving in and will also give a more visible external shape to the Zukunftskolleg. On January 25, 2010 the back office of the Zukunftskolleg has relocated to the new offices, several fellows with their work groups will follow. Certainly also our senior fellows will find some space in the new rooms of Y2.

Up to now our fellows have been accommodated in various offices all over the entire…

The Zukunftskolleg experienced a premiere on 12 January 2010. It was able to welcome a Dual Career Couple as Senior Fellows. PD Dr. Sabine von Heusinger is an historian at the Institute for History, University of Mannheim, while her husband, Prof. Dr. Klaus von Heusinger, is Professor and Chair of German and General Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart. They will work together at the Zukunftskolleg on a new joint project studying the constitution of social groups. The interdisciplinary…

On February 4-5, 2010, the Department of Linguistics and the Zukunftskolleg will host the workshop 'Case at the interfaces of grammar' at the University of Konstanz. It is organized by Chiara Gianollo and Doris Penka, who are Fellows at the Zukunftskolleg since 2008. The following speakers will present their work:

Markus Bader – University of Konstanz
Rajesh Bhatt – University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Ad Neeleman - University College, London
Henk van Riemsdijk – University of Tilburg
…

Irene Heim is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. She is one of the most renowned scholars working on the semantics of natural languages. Starting with her dissertation, she has put forward a number of ideas that have been very influential in the field, and there is hardly a topic in semantics she has not worked on. Irene Heim’s contribution to the field of formal semantics and the syntax/semantics…

New Release: The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe. Neubauer, John  and Török, Borbála Zsuzsanna eds., Berlin, New York : Walter de Gruyter,  2009

For more information about this book please visit:

http://www.degruyter.de/cont/fb/li/detailEn.cfm?id=IS-9783110217735-1

More from Borbála Zsuzsanna Török with Dietmar Müller and Balázs Trencsényi: Reframing the European Pasts: National Discourses and Regional Comparisons. Special issue of the journal EAST CENTRAL EUROPE 34, 1-2…

In September 2009 the Zukunftskolleg advertised mentorship grants of up to EUR 4,500 for the second time this year. Congratulations to all successful applicants:

• Dr. Antje Lahne (Dept. of Linguistics), Mentor: Prof. Marcel den Dikken, City University of New York, USA
• Dr. Diana Schmidt-Pfister (Cluster of Excellence exc 16), Mentor: Prof. Melissa S. Anderson, University of Minnesota, USA
• Dr. Anja Schwarz (Dept. of Literature Science) and Dr. Michael Neumann (Dept. of…