Current News

We welcome Denis Gebauer (Chemistry), Nina Schneider (History) and Ilja Serzants (Linguistics) at the Zukunftskolleg. As the first of 16 2-year Postdoctoral Fellows that were selected in the last call for applications, they started their Fellowship in February. The other 13 new Postdoctoral Fellows will come in the course of the next months.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Artist in Residence Patrick Tresset from the Computing Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. He has been nominated by Oliver Deussen from the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Konstanz and by Giovanni Galizia, and will be our guest for 9 months.

Patrick Tresset's main internationally recognised achievements are in the field of computational aesthetics, computational creativity and arts. As Artist in…

David Ganz has been offered a professorship in Art History at the University of Zurich. “This means for me that a long standing dream comes true as the scientific conditions there are very attractive for my work”, says David Ganz. He also thanks the Zukunftskolleg for its support in achieving this success. David is a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg since December 2007.

Common project by Artist in Residence Alexander Schellow and Senior Fellow Klaus von Heusinger

It began with an encounter at the Zukunftskolleg and now resulted in a conference on “Memory and Meaning between Dynamic and Stability”. When Artist in Residence Alexander Schellow and Senior Fellow Klaus von Heusinger met at the Zukunftskolleg about two years ago they had the idea of a common project with artists and linguists. In cooperation with the department of German Linguistics at the…

In the final Workshop on Future Research Directions, held on 10-11 January 2013, the Recruitment Committee decided to offer nine candidates applying for the 5-year Research Fellowships a position at the Zukunftskolleg. Three of them are co-funded by the ZIF-Marie Curie-programme of the EU and six by the German Excellence Initiative. The Zukunftskolleg welcomes its new members.

For further information visit http://zukunftskolleg.uni.kn

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Hans Adler from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, USA. He has been nominated by Gunhild Berg and will be our guest until March 23, 2013.

The Zukunftskolleg congratulates Doris Penka who has been offered a Substitute Professorship in “General Linguistics with Semantics as Main Focus” at the University of Konstanz in summer term 2013. She will teach four courses for Bachelor and Master students and substitute for Prof. Maribel Romero, who will be on sabbatical.

Margaret Thomas can stay at the Zukunftskolleg for 3 more years. The DFG is providing funding for her project “Parameterization and Algebraic Points in O-Minimal Structures”. We congratulate Margaret and wish her all the best.

On November 26th and 27th Giovanni Galizia was invited to present the Zukunftskolleg at the symposium “Das deutsche Wissenschaftssystem und seine Postdocs: Perspektiven zur Gestaltung der Qualifizierungsphase nach der Promotion”. The event was held on the occasion of the opening of “Zur Rosen – Haus für den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs” at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. Giovanni Galizia took part in a panel discussion entitled „Postdoc-Phase als Qualifizierungsphase: Verlust oder…

Sarang Dalal received a 3-year grant together with his partners Jean-Philippe Lachaux and Philippe Ryvlin (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France) and Gustavo Deco (Center for Brain and Cognition, University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain). Their project “SEMAINE: Simultaneous MEG or fMRI and Intracranial EEG” will be funded through the European Commission's Network of European funding for Neuroscience Research (ERA-NeT NEURON).

In its second pre-selection, held on the 5^th of November, the Recruitment Committee decided to invite 18 candidates applying for the 5-year Research Fellowships to the Workshop on Future Research Directions. The workshop will take place on 10-11 January 2013 at the University of Konstanz. As the Zukunftskolleg will be offering thirteen 5-year positions it will be an exciting competition between the young researchers.

During the Jour Fixe on the 8th of November the Fellows elected Margarita Stolarova as a new member of the Executive Committee. She replaces Martin Bruder who will leave the Zukunftskolleg at the end of the year. He has accepted a position as head of the department of “evaluation and statistics” at the DAAD in Bonn, starting on January 1, 2013. We would like to thank Martin Bruder for his work as an Executive Committee member and look forward to Margaritas contributions.

The Zukunftskolleg is warmly welcoming Senior Fellow Irene Heim (Cambridge, USA). She has been nominated by Doris Penka. Her last stay at the Zukunftskolleg was in spring. Now she will be our guest until 24 November.

The Martin Buber Society – a joint initiative of the BMBF and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a cooperation partner of the Zukunftskolleg – started a new call for applications. It offers generous fellowships in all fields of the humanities and social sciences for German and Israeli scholars who have completed their Ph.D. degree within the last five years. Fellowships are initially granted for two years and may be renewed further. The Society aims at providing young scholars with…

From 27-30 October ten members of the Zukunftskolleg visited the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where they continued their interdisciplinary workshop “Forgetting”. The first part of the workshop took place in Konstanz in June. Including presentations, text-, film- and panel discussions the notion “Forgetting” was analyzed from different points of view and backgrounds of expertise. For a detailed report see http://www.z…

From September 2012 to January 2013, Senior Fellow Irene Albers spends another stay at the Zukunftskolleg. During her stay, she continues to work on a forthcoming book under the heading of “The passions of the body and the language of the novella. The interaction between emotional physiology and poetry in Romance novellas from Boccaccio to Madame de Lafayette”. Her book aims to address the meaning of certain involuntary physical reactions associated with emotions in the novellas of the Early…

Simon Hanslmayr, collaborating with Karl-Keinz Bäuml from the University of Regensburg and Maria Wimber from the MRC Cambridge, provided evidence that our brain deliberately forgets irrelevant information. Although forgetting normally is described as a failure of memory, it can help us to delete unwanted information in order to discharge brain capacity and to keep our memory flexible.

To explain the formation of new memories it is important to consider the neural synchronization between distant…

From 13-17 October 2012 Simon Hanslmayr and Sarang Dalal, together with their research group, participated in the "Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience 2012" (SfN) in New Orleans. They were involved in five postersessions and three talks. With more than 35.000 attendees the SfN claims to be the largest conference in this field and usually also attracts a lot of public interest.

The Scientific Retreat of Malte Drescher’s research group took place from September 9 to September 11, 2012 as an off-site meeting at the Marbach castle conference and training center. The castle’s Boathouse offered a fantastic change of scenery for the eleven group members during their scientific sessions.

At the current stage the group has to master the step from a junior research group to an established one. While the first generation of PhD researchers is going to leave the group soon,…

After the Recruitment Committee´s first pre-selection, held on 19 September, 153 out of 352 candidates applying for the 2-year and 5-year Fellowships are left. Their applications will now be judged by external referees. Afterwards the Recruitment Committee will take a second pre-selection on 5 November. The best candidates for the 5-year Fellowships will then be invited to the Workshop on Future Research Directions at the University of Konstanz on 10/11 January 2013. In the same meeting the…

Sarang Dalal received a 3-year DFG grant in the amount of 380.558 Euros for his project "Robust Characterization of Hippocampus Dynamics from Magnetoencephalography".

Martin Bruder and Attila Tanyi participated in the 8^th international conference of the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP). It took place in Konstanz from September 17 to 20 under the title “What may we believe? What ought we to do?” and was co-hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Konstanz.  Martin and Attila presented their interdisciplinary project “Overdemanding Consequentialism? An Experimental Approach” in the section on “Normative Ethics, Metaethics, Theory of…

Ulrich Sieberer accepted a visiting professorship in the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. In the winter term 2012/13 he will teach a seminar entitled “Institutional Design in Western Democracies” for Master and PhD students in political science. In cooperation with his mentor Prof. Wolfgang C. Müller, head of the Department of Government and Professor for Democratic Governance, Ulrich Sieberer is currently working on publications about institutional changes in European…

Thomas Voigtmann, in cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy (HZB), published an article in "Physical Review Letters". Together with his research group at the Zukunftskolleg Thomas Voigtmann developed a theoretical model that allows to qualitatively describe the different phases from creeping to ultimate materials failure. To prevent materials damage is a major concern in engineering applications, from the design of airplanes to that of bridges. The long-time…

Recently three new articles by Doris Penka were published:

• Doris Penka (2012): “Negative Features on Negative Indefinites: Evidence from Split Scope”, in: “Journal of Semantics” Volume 29 / Issue 3: 373-402.

• Agnes Jäger & Doris Penka (2012): “Development of sentential negation in the history of German”, in: “Comparative Germanic Syntax. The state of the art” by Peter Ackema, Rhona Alcorn, Caroline Heycock, Dany Jaspers, Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (eds.) [LA 191],…

The Zukunftskolleg received more than 350 applications for the 2-year Postdoctoral and the 5-year Research Fellowships. Closing date for applications was on 26 August. The awarding of the Fellowships is done in a competitive procedure involving international and interdisciplinary experts who are represented in the Recruitment Committee. The dates for the pre-selection are 19 September and 5 November. The candidates for the 5-year Fellowships will also be invited to the Workshop on Future…

Martin Bruder accepted an invitation of the Austrian Science Board to present the Zukunftskolleg at the Technology Forum Alpbach on 24 August 2012, discussing about „Via ferrata into the scientific career”. Read more about it in the newspaper article (in German):

https://cms.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/zentral/forschung/zukunftskolleg/Die_Presse_120826.pdf

Dr. Niels Weidmann, winner of the renowned Sofja Kovalevskaja prize, will start working in the Zukunftskolleg on 1 October 2012. The financial means will be used to build a research group analyzing the role of modern communication technologies in mobilizing a huge crowd. Read more about it in the press release (in German):

https://cms.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/zentral/forschung/zukunftskolleg/124_2012_KovalevskajaPreis.pdf

How the brain brings back memories of past events remains largely unknown. In a collaboration between the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge (Dr. Maria Wimber), the University of Konstanz (Dr. Simon Hanslmayr, Zukunfskolleg) and the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, researchers have now identified a rapid memory reactivation mechanism that has so far only been speculated about. In this project, participants learned long lists of words while the screen was flickering at…