News

Appointment / Career

2023

Damian Omar Martinez | Research Fellow “María Zambrano” at the Department of Sociology, University of Murcia (Spain)
Raphael Susewind | Associate Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science

2022

Irfan Ahmad | Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Turkey
Felix Bender | Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics at Northumbria University
Benjamin Boudou | Professor of Political Science at the University of Rennes 1, France (starting in Sep. 2022)
Bouke de Vries | Ambizione Fellow (Principal Investigator) Zürich University
Alan Gamlen | Professor at the Australian National University
Jifeng Liu | Visiting Scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University (August 2022 - August 2023)
Jin-Heon Jung | Guest Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yosei University, South Korea
Scott Maclochlainn | Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University
Neena Mahadev | Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) in Columbia University
Sabine Mohamed | Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University
Farhan Samanani | Research Fellow at University College London
Yang Shen | Assistant Professor in Anthropology and One-Hundred-Talent Researcher at Zhejiang University, China
Michael Stasik | Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel
Xiaoxuan Wang | Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chris White | Assistant Director in the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University
Sakura Yamamura | Associate Professor at the RWTH Aachen University

2021

Felix Bender | Postdoc research fellow at the RIPPLE (Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics Leuven) at the KU Leuven
Benjamin Boudou | Research fellow and scientific coordinator of the Leibniz Research Group “Transformations of Citizenship” hosted in the center Normative Orders at the Goethe University Frankfurt
Annalisa Butticci | Assistant Professor at the Georgetown University in the department of Theology and Religious Studies
Ciulia Carabelli | Assistant Professor in Social Theory at Queen Mary University of London
Tzu-Lung Chiu | Postdoc researcher at the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Ministry of Science Technology Center for the Advancement of the Humanities / Social Sciences national Taiwan University
Lucas G. Drouhot | Assistant Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University
Arndt Emmerich | Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology at the University of Heidelberg
Jiazhi Fengjiang | Assistant Professor at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Social and Political Science
Eijiro Hazama | Researcher and lecture at the School of Human Cultures, The University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan
Alexander Horstmann | Guest Professor at SDAC, Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen 2021-22 and Guest Professor at UNESCO Chair of Peace Studies, University Jaume I, Castellón, Spain
Nicole Iturriaga | Assistant Professor at University of California, Irvine in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society
Jin-Heon Jung | Professor at National Institute for Unification Education, Korea
Christine Lang | Research fellow at the Institute of Geography and the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at the University of Osnabrueck
Samuel Lengen | Scientific Officer at the Innosuisse (Swiss Innovation Agency), Bern
Jifeng Liu | Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University
Sabine Mohamed | Postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the department of Anthropology
Mareike Riedel | Lecturer at Macquarie Law School at Macquarie University in Sydney
Dora Sampaio | Assistant Professor of Human Geography (Transnational Mobilities and Wellbeing) at Utrecht University
Samuel David Schmid | Researcher and lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland
Yang Shen | Frieberg Post-Doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies
Magdalena Suerbaum | Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies (IZG) at the University of Bielefeld
Siqi Tu | Postdoctoral Fellow for Global Perspectives in Society at New York University Shanghai
Arpita Roy | Faculty member at the University of Michigan Science, Technology & Society
Patricia Ward | Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Center for Integration Studies, TU-Dresden
Jingyang Yu | Consultant at the emcra (Consulting company in the field of EU funding), Berlin

Awards

Beatriz Aragon was awarded a First book Grant by the independent social research foundation (ISRF) in 2022 https://www.isrf.org/2022/12/21/fbg1-and-isf9-awards-announcement/
Thi Ngoc Vuong was awarded a Ph.D. degree at the Radboud University in Nijmegen in Dec. 2022, for a dissertation, entitled “Strangers Made Intimate: Contemporary ethnic relations and everyday politics in a Sino-Vietnamese border commune”, under supervision of Dr Tam Ngo, Dr Peter van der Veer and Dr Eric Venbrux.
Salah Punathil received the Chancellor’s Award for Contribution in Research and Teaching at the University of Hyderabad (India) in 2022.
Sahana Udupa received Joan Shorenstein Fellowship awarded by Harvard University for her research on digital extreme speech, artificial intelligence and the autonomy of factchecking in 2021. https://shorensteincenter.org/maria-ressa-sahana-udupa-named-fall-2021-joan-shorenstein-fellows/. As part of the fellowship, she published a paper, “Ethical Scaling: Extreme Speech and the (In)Significance of Artificial Intelligence”, with her research team members.
Francqui Foundation in Belgium awarded Sahana Udupa the “Francqui Chair” in recognition of her contribution to critical digital research in 2022.
Neena Mahadev’s book manuscript “Of Karma and Grace: Mediating Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka” was the 2021 winner of the Claremont Prize in the Study of Religion. https://www.ircpl.columbia.edu/claremont-winners
Article prize: Jiazhi Fengjiang’s article “The ethical labour of suspension among nightclub hostesses in Southeast China” won the 20^th William L. Holland Prize for the best article published in 2021 Pacific Affairs. https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/announcements/current-holland-prize-winner/2021-holland-prize/
Book Award: Marian Burchardt’s book “Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West” published Rutgers University Press in 2020 won 2021 ISSR (International Society for the Sociology of Religion) Best Book Award. https://www.sisr-issr.org/en/awards-and-grant
Book Award: Alan Gamlen’s book “Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions” published by Oxford University Press in 2019 won the 2020 Distinguished Book Award for Best Book on Ethnicity and Migration from the International Studies Association. https://www.isanet.org/Programs/Awards/ENMISA-Distinguished-Book

Book Publications

2022

Ahmad, Irfan & Kang, Jie 2022 (Eds.). The Nation Form in the Global Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Link
Chan, Felicity Hwee-Hwa 2022. Tensions in Diversity: Spaces for Collective Life in Los Angeles. University of Toronto Press. Link
Iturriaga, Nicole 2022 Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain’s Past. Columbia University Press. Link
Liu, Jifeng. 2022. Negotiating the Christian Past in China: Memory and Missions in Contemporary Xiamen. Penn State University Press. Link
Maclochlainn, Scott (Upcoming in November). The Copy Generic: How the Nonspecific Makes our Social Worlds. The University of Chicago Press. Link
Scholz, Maximilian Miguel. 2022. Strange Brethren. Refugees, Religious Bonds, and Reformation in Frankfurt, 1554-1608. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Link
Simone, AbdouMaliq 2022. The Surrounds--Urban Life within and beyond Capture. Duke University Press. Link

2021

Ahmad, Irfan. 2021 (Ed.). Anthropology and Ethnography are not equivalent. Berghahn. New York. Oxford. Link
Lisa Björkman. 2021 (Ed.). Bombay Brokers. Duke University Press. Link
Paul Bramadat, Mar Griera, Marian Burchardt, Julia Martinez-Ariño 2021 (Eds). Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces. Bloomsbury. Link
Jayeel Cornelio, François Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen, Linda Woodhead. 2021 (Eds.). Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society. Link
Ran Hirschl 2021. City, State. Constitutionalism and the Megacity. Oxford University Press. Link
Hudson, Alexander. 2021. The veil of participation: Citizens and political parties in constitution-making processes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Link
Jung, Jin-Heon. 2021. Berlin-esŏ mannan Seoul kwa Pyongyang: (T’al)pun-dan tosi-ui yŏlmang iyaki (Seoul and Pyongyang meeting in Berlin: An Essay of (post)Division Cities’ Aspirations). Seoul: Yŏllinch’aktŭl (in Korean)
Jung, Jin-Heon. 2021. Ku-sul-saeng-ae-sa-lŭl t'ong-hae pon 5.18ŭi ki-ŏk-kwa yŏk-sa 11: tok-il-p'yŏn (A Memory and History of 5.18 through Life Histories11: Koreans in Germany). kwang-chu: 5.18ki-nyŏm-chae-tan. (in Korean)
Jung, Jin-Heon. 2021. (Co-authored) Tok-il han-in-i-chu-yŏ-sŏng-ŭi ch'o-kuk-chŏk salm-kwa chŏng-ch'e-sŏng (German-Korean Women’s Transnational life and Identities). Seoul: Bookkorea. (in Korean)
Jung, Jin-Heon. 2021. (Co-authored) T'ong-hap kŭ i-hu-lŭl saeng-kak-ha-ta (Thinking the Aftermath of a unification). Seoul: sa-hoe-p'yŏng-lon-a-k'a-te-mi. (in Korean)
Martínez-Ariño, Julia. 2021. Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York. Link
Meyer, Birgitt & van der Veer, Peter. 2021 (Eds.). Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories. Bloomsbury, London. Link
Seethaler-Wari, Shahd.; Chitchian, Somayeh.; Momić, Maja. 2021 (Eds.). Inhabiting displacement: Architecture and authorship. Birkhäuser, Basel. De Gruyter. Link
Türkmen, Gülay. 2021. Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity. Oxford University Press. Link
Udupa, Sahana; Gagliardone, Iginio; Hervik, Peter. 2021 (Eds.) Digital Hate: The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech. Bloomington, Indiana USA: Indiana University Press. Link
Weinbach, Christine. 2021. Systemtheoretische Geschlechtersoziologie: Bestand, Kritik, Perspektiven. Beltz Juventa, Weinheim. Link
Yang, Fenggang and White, Chris. 2021 (Eds.). Christian Social Activism and Rule of Law in Chinese Societies. Lehigh University Press. Link

Grants

The new guards: Re-bordering the Southeast Mediterranean in an age of migration

Michalis Moutselos

The Max Planck research group, approved to begin in 2022, looks at how Cyprus, Greece and Malta have managed their transformation from countries of emigration to destination countries for migrants and asylum seekers; and their emergence as border states of an emerging EU migration and asylum regime. Scholars from the three countries and migration researchers from Europe will form a network and explore this rebordering of the Southeast Mediterranean in a series of workshops and international conferences.
Re-bordering gradually erodes the sovereignty of nation states and leads to clashes (but also cooperation) among European, national and local institutions. Relatedly, re-bordering is having profound consequences on public understandings of citizenship and nationhood in the three countries. The partner group will be led by MPI alumnus Michalis Moutselos and co-directed by MPI Director Steven Vertovec. It is a formal collaboration between the University of Cyprus and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG). It aims to provide a systematic theoretical and empirical account of re-bordering in this understudied area of the European Union.

REVENANT: On the post-imperial legacies and memories of the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs

Jeremy F. Walton
11 April 2022

From 2016 to 2022, the Max Planck Research Group “Empires of Memory: The Cultural Politics of Historicity in Former Habsburg and Ottoman Cities” examined the textures, silences, and contradictions that shape the afterlives of empires in central Europe, the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levant. Our research focused on eight cities—Belgrade, Budapest, Istanbul, Sarajevo, Thessaloniki, Trieste, Vienna, and Zagreb—but our explorations were wider in scope and ambition. We reflected on the traces of imperial legacies inscribed on tombstones and memorials. We interrogated the summoning of imperial precedents to whitewashed, majoritarian images of nations and states in the present. We delineated the persistence of imperial social, political and institutional formations in the present, ranging from ideologies of religious and ethnic difference to charitable institutions. We tasted imperial pasts in Viennese-style cafés and cafeterias specializing in “Ottoman” cuisine.
In tandem with the completion of Empires of Memory, a new research group, “REVENANT-Revivals of Empire: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Tribulation,” recently began its activities at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Rijeka, Croatia, with the support of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (#10100290). Like Empires of Memory, REVENANT was designed by group leader Dr. Jeremy F. Walton. REVENANT is a continuation, an expansion, and a refinement of Empires of Memory. In addition to the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, REVENANT also encompasses the legacies and collective memories of the Romanov Empire. Accordingly, REVENANT entails a more direct focus on post-imperial renderings of inter-imperial dynamics: the ways in which relations between former empires continue to impact the present.
A threefold heuristic informs REVENANT’s methodology: post-imperial persons, post-imperial places, and post-imperial things. Bygone empires as objects of memory achieve personification through former rulers (Emperor Franz Josef; Süleyman the Magnificent; Tsar Peter the Great), imperial consorts (Sissi; Hürrem Sultan; Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna), and rebels (Gavrilo Princip; Atatürk; Lenin). The logics and textures of former empires differ according to place and scale—former imperial centers, erstwhile imperial port cities, and the borderlands of bygone empires each preserve distinct legacies and incubate contrasting memories. Finally, different categories of things constitute imperial pasts—our focus will be on post-imperial relics, post-imperial commodities, and post-imperial memorials. A broader discussion of this post-imperial, inter-imperial methodology can be found in “Post-Empire,” Dr. Walton’s recent Working Paper for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.
REVENANT will conduct its research over a five-year span. In addition to Dr. Walton, it will employ four post-doctoral and four doctoral fellows. Like Empires of Memory, REVENANT is adamantly interdisciplinary, and will incorporate insights from Anthropology, Art and Architectural History, Comparative Literature, History, Memory Studies, Political Science, Sociology, and Urban Studies. Our geographic remit includes no less than nine post-imperial nation-states, including Austria, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Please visit us in Rijeka if and when you are able. more