Special Topics of the Year

Human / non-Human -
Special Jour Fixe Series within the UBIAS’ Topic of the Year 2024

• 07.05.2024
  "GCoo-BreeD: advancing comparative research on cooperative breeding with a peer-reviewed, updatable and fair Global Cooperative Breeding Database"
  Yitzchak Ben-Mocha (ZENiT Research Fellow /Biology & Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour) & Maike Woith (Biology)
  13:30-15:00, Y 326/Zoom
   
• 02.07.2024
  "Using baboons to map ancient biocultural pathways across the Sahara"
  Gisela Kopp (ZENiT Research Fellow /Biology & Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour)
  13:30-15:00, Y 326/Zoom
   
•  16.07.2024
  "Technological change and the welfare state"

  Tobias Tober (ZENiT Research Fellow / Politics and Public Administration & Cluster "The Politics of Inequality")
  13:30-15:00, Y 326/Zoom

•  10.-20.12.2024
  "What Makes Us Human?"
  An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Humanity’s Nature and Value organized by The Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Jerusalem, and the Zukunftskolleg

Special Jour fixe Series on topic of the term "Change, Progress and Complexity"

• 14.01.2020
  "Change, Progress and Complexity" at the Zukunftskolleg
  Open Discussion
  15:15-16:45, Y 326
   
•  21.01.2020

  "Change, Progress and Complexity" at the university

  The Future of Work and Labor Market Institutions
  Sebastian Findeisen (Dept. of Economics)

  In today’s conversation, there are many reports and news articles predicting dramatic impacts on the number of jobs which will disappear because of novel technologies and advances in AI and robotics. I first discuss what lies behind these numbers and how we should interpret them. Then I discuss how industrial robots have affected employment and wages in Germany and the US. Esp. given the German experience, I will argue how labor market institutions like strong unions and employment protections laws, which were once considered out of fashion because they decrease dynamism on the labor market, might be among the best and most effective ways to guarantee that the gains from automation and AI are distributed widely in the population.
  
  Complexity in economic practice: A case for ethnography
  Stefan Leins (Dept. of History and Sociology / Anthropology, focusing on cultures of economy)
  
  Modern economic market structures and practices are usually said to be complex and thus hard to understand. Indeed, they are many times transnational, multi-layered, and often based on highly specialized expertise. In my talk, I will argue that ethnography – anthropology's method of studying and describing cultural settings – is destined to deconstruct such complex fields and reveal the cultural rationales behind modern economic structures and practices. I will do so by referring to the expert practice of stock market forecasting, which heavily builds upon cultural and social techniques and cannot to be understood without consideration of the "human" that always stands at the center of economic action.

  15:15-16:46, Y 326
   
•  28 January 2020
  "Change, Progress and Complexity" regarding Digitalization
  Open Discussion
  15:15-16:46, Y 326

Migration -
Special Jour Fixe Series within the UBIAS’ Topic of the Year 2019

/mʌɪˈɡreɪʃ(ə)n/ is at once a historical constant, a social predicament, a political gambit, a human rights emergency, a geo-political trend, an economic calculus, a literary trope, a highly mediatized phenomenon, and more. It is not limited to human migration but encompasses movement of animals from one region to another as well as the migration of cells within a plant or data migration issues. In this term’s Jour Fixe we want to examine the interdisciplinary scope of migration and disentangle intersections and discrepancies in the different academic disciplines

• 11 June  2019
  "Animal migration - a quick introduction to the terminology".
  Gisela Kopp ( Biology / Research Fellow)
  "Migration of the white stork"
   Andrea Flack (Biology / Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour)
  15:15-16:46, Y 326
• 11 June until 12 July 2019 Exhibition "Anima Mundi" by Illustrator George Butler (London)
  Foyer of the Library, University of Konstanz
• 18 June 2019
  "Human mobility and Internet usage: Evidence from Nigerian micro-level data"
  Maurizio Strazzeri (Economics; Graduate School “Decision Sciences” / Associated Fellow per Doctoral Fellowship)
  “Beyond the Border: Transnational Film Culture between Germany and Great Britain”
  John Hoffmann (Literature / Research Visit Fellow)
  15:15-16:46, Y 326
• 25 June 2019
  Lightning Talks & Discussion on “Migration”
  Midissage of the Exhibition „Anima Mundi“ with George Butler
  BibCafé of the Library, University of Konstanz
• 6 November 2019
  Migration meets Music
  Lightning Talks on "Migration" and Vernissage of the Exhibition „Anima Mundi“ by George Butler
  Music by the Blue Stockings
  17:00-19:00, Café Mondial, Konstanz

Ageing – Life, Cultures, Civilization -
Special Jour Fixe Series within the UBIAS’ Topic of the Year 2018

“New lines on my face, More white on my head...With Wisdom comes new freedom!”
Haiku by Amira

As we grow older, our organism changes in ways that will reduce our ability to respond to stress, and hereby increasing the homeostatic imbalance and the risk of many medical diseases. These biological changes are accompanied by a range of psychological and social changes such as cognitive and physical decline, dependency on social care and medical treatment.
“Age”, can be addressed and analysed in a broad context and from many disciplinary perspectives. The ways in which we view and interpret signs of aging as well as the age segmentation of the human life span (e.g. when are we considered old?) have changed through history and are subject to major cultural differences.
These and many aspects of “Ageing” were discussed in a Special Jour Fixe Series in December and January. Within this framework we hosted three events and a travelling exhibition:

• 11 December 2018
  "The Science and Fiction of Ageing"
  Jeff Kochan & Jennifer Randerath (Zukunftskolleg Fellows)
   
• 18 December 2018
  "0-99, The Ageing Game"
  Anna Sophie Santner (Artist from Vienna)
   
• 8 January 2019
  "The Role of Age in Leadership and Entrepreneurship"
  Hannes Zacher (Leipzig University)
   
• December 2018 until March 2019
  Exhibition of “Life on the Line”
  Travelling game on ageing provided by the Medical Museion Copenhagen

Size -
Special Jour Fixe Series Summer Semester 2018

• 2 May 2018
  "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Size Effects on the Small Scale in Chemistry and Physics"
  Klaus Boldt (Chemistry / Research Fellow)
  
  
• 9 May 2018
  "How we (don’t) understand mathematical infinities"
  Carolin Antos-Kuby (Philosophy / Research Fellow)
  
  
• 16 May 2018
  "Size in Political Science: Ethnic groups, power and distributional politics"
  Janina Beiser-McGrath (Politics and Public Administration / Postdoctoral Fellow)

How international is academia? -
Special Jour Fixe Series Winter Semester 2017/18

• 17 and 24 January 2018
  "How international is academia?"
  At this first part of the special Jour Fixe on 17 January 17 , this issue was dicussed with a broader audience. The open discussion was facilitated by moderator Harald Kühl (die regionauten).
  In the second part, on 24 January 2018, the Fellows were invited to draw implications for our work at the Zukunftskolleg based on the results of the first meeting.