Events

ALUMNI HOUR | Sakura Yamamura (Aachen University): "Pausing, pivoting and persevering - building a track of your own in migration research and beyond"

Date: May 13, 2025
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Sakura Yamamura (Aachen University)
Location: Zoom Meeting

Sakura Yamamura is currently professor in human geography at RWTH Aachen University. With her expertise in migration and urban studies, she brings new perspectives into the social and economic geography of migration and mobility. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the SCD from September 2018 till February 2022. She studied geography, sociology, and social & cultural anthropology at the University of Hamburg, Université de Paris 1 - Sorbonne and the University of California at Berkeley. She previously worked for the Migration Research Group at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI), in the International Migration Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and at the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). She was Junior Visiting Fellow at the Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration, and Development (MACIMIDE) at Maastricht University, and was a lecturer at the Departments of Geography at the University of Hamburg and Kiel University. [more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Julia Martínez-Ariño (University of Groningen): "Building an Academic Career as a Work-in-Progress: Insights from my 'Unplanned' Journey"

Date: Jan 15, 2025
Time: 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Julia Martínez-Ariño (University of Groningen)
Location: Zoom Meeting

Julia Martínez-Ariño is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) and Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the MPI in 2013 and in 2014-2017. Her research focuses on public policies on religious diversity, secularism, Jewish heritage practices and religious disaffiliation and nonreligion. [more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Magdalena Suerbaum (Universität Bielefeld, Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies): "The in-between: navigating academic (non-)belonging"

Date: Oct 30, 2024
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Magdalena Suerbaum (Universität Bielefeld, Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies)
Location: Zoom Meeting

Magdalena Suerbaum is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her research interests are on forced displacement, gender, legal precarity, and belonging, with a current focus on parenting practices and intergenerational transmission of knowledge among Syrians living in Turkey and Germany. Previously, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen. She has co-edited three Special Issues (Ethnic and Racial Studies 2023; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2022; Citizenship Studies 2022) and is the author of “Masculinities and Displacement in the Middle East: Syrian refugees in Egypt” (I.B. Tauris, 2020). [more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Dana Schmalz (MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg): “Writing about migration in troubled times: academic projects and public interventions"

Date: May 29, 2024
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Dana Schmalz (MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg)
Location: Zoom Meeting

Dana Schmalz is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Her work sits at the intersection of international law and legal theory, with a focus on refugee law and human rights. Dana holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Frankfurt and an LL.M. in Comparative Legal Thought from Cardozo Law School, New York. Her book “Refugees, Democracy and the Law. Political Rights at the Margins of the State” was published in 2020. Her book “Das Bevölkerungsargument” (the population argument) is forthcoming with Suhrkamp in 2024. [more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Gabriele Alex (University of Tübingen): “To, for, and on behalf of whom do we speak? Collaboration, participation, and questions of representation around research and publishing"

Date: Dec 5, 2023
Time: 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Gabriele Alex (University of Tübingen)
Gabriele Alex is full professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. She was one of the earliest Research Fellows at MPI MMG from 2009 until 2011. Before joining the Max Planck Institute, she was Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology while also serving as Director of the Master’s Program Health and Society in South Asia at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg. She has taught at various Universities in Germany, Slovenia, and Switzerland. She is one of the editors of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology.
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Maria Schiller (Erasmus University Rotterdam): “Ideas, networks and power in European local diversity policymaking: a personal account of my research trajectory"

Date: Oct 5, 2023
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Maria Schiller (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Maria Schiller is Associate Professor of Public policy, Migration, and Diversity at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her work is motivated by the desire to understand and capture public policymaking on migration and diversity, with a focus on Europe, often comparing across countries and cities. In her research, she is interested in the practices and networks involved in governing migration-related diversity and investigates the role of officials, civil society, and private actors therein. Previously, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, a Substitute Assistant Professor at the University of Tübingen, a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Kent, and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Vienna. She holds a Ph.D. in Migration Studies (2014) from the University of Kent.
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Benjamin Boudou (University of Rennes): “On academic hope”

Date: May 9, 2023
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Benjamin Boudou (University of Rennes)
Benjamin Boudou is a professor of political science at the University of Rennes. He is the editor of the political theory journal Raisons Politiques and a fellow at the French Collaborative Institute on Migration. He is the author of Politique de l'hospitalité: Une généalogie conceptuelle [Politics of hospitality: A conceptual genealogy] (CNRS Éditions, 2017) and Le dilemme des frontières [The Border Dilemma: Ethics and politics of immigration] (EHSS Editions, 2018). He has recently published in Social Research, European Journal of Political Theory, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Migration and Society, and Essays in Philosophy.
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Sahana Udupa (University of Munich): “Surviving or thriving? Work and life in Germany as an ‘international’ scholar”

Date: Feb 14, 2023
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Sahana Udupa (University of Munich)
Sahana Udupa is Professor of Media Anthropology at the University of Munich (LMU München) and Principal Investigator of the For Digital Dignity Research Network. She teaches and researches online extreme speech, politics of artificial intelligence, critical digital studies, news and journalism, and media policy. Her latest publications include the research paper on digital technology and extreme speech commissioned by the United Nations (2021), co-authored monograph, Digital Unsettling: Decoloniality and Dispossession in the Age of Social Media (New York University Press, 2023, with E.G. Dattatreyan), co-edited volume, Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech (Indiana University Press, 2021). Udupa is the recipient of Joan Shorenstein Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, European Research Council Grant Awards and Francqui Chair (Belgium).
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Anna Cieslik (University of Cambridge): “Research Funding Opportunities and Applications”

Date: Sep 28, 2022
Time: 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Anna Cieslik (University of Cambridge)
Anna Cieslik received her PhD in Human Geography from Clark University. From 2011 to 2013 she worked as a postdoc at the MMG-MPG and then as an assistant professor at New Jersey City University. Currently she is a Research Facilitator for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Anna is involved in analyzing funding trends and seeking funding opportunities. She provides advice and feedback on grant applications. Her work includes supporting research strategy development, running workshops and training sessions, and helping researchers develop their projects. She is a Course Director for a Postgraduate Certificate Course on Research and Innovation Leadership.
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]

ALUMNI HOUR | Marian Burchardt (Leipzig University): “Configuring Diversity: Infrastructures and Affinities in Pandemic Spaces”

Date: Jun 9, 2022
Time: 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Marian Burchardt (Leipzig University)
Marian Burchardt is Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University. Previously, he worked as research fellow at MMG from 2012 to 2017 and published extensively on “Diversity”. Moreover, he was a senior researcher at the Centre “Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”. He is the author of Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West (Rutgers UP, 2020) and Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa (Palgrave Macmillan 2015).
Location: Zoom Meeting

[more]