Research Fellows

(15.07. – 15.08.2022)

van de Löcht, Joana

After a Bachelor's degree in Near Eastern Archaeology and Assyriology and a Master's degree in Edition Studies and Textual Criticism, Joana van de Löcht wrote a dissertation on Ernst Jünger's diaries of the Second World War at the University of Heidelberg, which was published in 2018. She collaborated in various edition projects and has been a research assistant at the Institute of German Studies at WWU Münster since April 2021. Her work focuses on literature of the early modern period and the 20th century, and on the field of edition philology. Currently, she is particularly interested in the historical dimensions of the Environmental Humanities.

(15.04 – 14.05; 15.07 – 14.08 2022)

Yizhou Wang

Yizhou Wang received her MLitt. in Arts of China from the University of Glasgow and in 2015 started her Ph.D. in Chinese Art History at the University of Heidelberg. Her dissertation focuses on the visual (self-)representations of courtesans (mingji名妓) in the Ming dynasty through the lens of gender. She worked at the Calligraphy and Painting Department of the Palace Museum Beijing in 2014. She also studied at SOAS University of London, Kyoto University, and Tokyo University. She developed an initial research interest in the artistic representations of plants since 2013 and published an article on the Chinese double lotus. In recent years, she has been working on human-nature interactions in arts and literature during the Ming-Qing transition. Her professional research interests include Chinese paintings (pre-modern), Ming-Qing visual and material culture, gender studies in art history, Sino-Japanese art interactions, (self-)portraiture, women artists, and early East Asian photography

01.05.2022 - 30.06.2022

Yizhou Wang

Shangshang Wang graduated with an MA in Transcultural Studies from the University of Heidelberg with a thesis on the first establishment of psychology as a scientific discipline at Peking University during the late 1910s. Starting from 2020, she is a doctoral candidate and member of the Freigeist-Fellowship research project “Radical Utopian Communities: Global Histories from the Margins, 1900-1950” led by Dr. Robert Kramm at LMU, Munich. She has wide research interests in the history of scientific and political thought in modern East Asia. Her current research project investigates anarchism and its biological fascinations in early twentieth-century China and Japan.

01.04.2022 - 30.04.2022

Krusche, Renée

Renée Krusche is a historian of modern China with a special interest in medical history. She is a PostDoc at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where in 2020 she finished her PhD on the topic of health practices and civilization diseases in Mao era China. Currently she is researching Chinese veterinary history, historical human-animal relations in Asia, Chinese gendered health practices and the tradition of Yoga in Republican China.

01.10.2021 - 31.11.2021

Kaminski, Johannes

Johannes D. Kaminski’s research interests are German literature, Chinese classic novels and contemporary global science fiction. He received his PhD in German Studies at the University of Oxford in 2011 with a thesis on Goethe. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2012-2015) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Academia Sinica (2015-2017) in Taipei, Taiwan. From 2018 to 2020 he held a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Vienna. He is currently based at the Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Recent articles include ‘The Neo-Frontier in Contemporary Preparedness Novels’ (Journal of American Studies 55.1, 2020) and ‘Leaving Gaia Behind: The Ethics of Space Migration in Cixin Liu’s and Neil Stephenson’s Science Fiction’ (World Literature Studies 13.2, 2021).

01.10.2021 - 31.12.2021

Wen, Jiajun Dale

Dr. Jiajun Dale Wen has been working on sustainable development issues for more than a decade, with topics including sustainable agriculture, climate change, energy security etc. She is currently a visiting fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, as well as a special guest researcher in the Environment and Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She was a co-author for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) – which some call the IPCC of agriculture. Over the last decade she has followed the international climate negotiations closely and has substantial insights on the Chinese government’s reasoning and policy making as well as to what is happening on the ground in China – both in terms of climate action as well as the effects of the current development trajectory. She holds a PhD from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

01.04.2021 - 31.12.2021

SUN, Peidong (孙沛东)

Sun Peidong, formerly Professor of History at Fudan University, Shanghai, and currently visiting scholar at Sciences Po and EURICS in Paris, will be coming to Heidelberg regularly as a visiting professor, beginning in the summer term of 2021. Sun has taught courses at Stanford University and UC Berkeley and has just been offered the position of Michael J. Zak Associate Professor of History for China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University. Sun Peidong is a social and cultural historian of the post-1949 period. Her research has centred on the history and contemporary implications of Chinese everyday life and politics. She has published on topics such as global reading practices, the politics of fashion, and mate choices in China. Sun Peidong is presently working on a book titled Underground Reading of the Sent-down Generation: History and Memory of the Cultural Revolution. She will be holding workshops and engage in a digital lecture series!

01.06.2021 - 31.07.2021

Grimberg Phillip

Phillip is a cultural historian specializing in the material cultures of late Imperial and contemporary China. He studied Chinese studies and International law at Universities in Germany (Cologne, Bonn) and China (Beijing, Hangzhou). After receiving his PhD in 2014 he held a number of research and teaching positions at different institutions (Bonn, Frankfurt, Erlangen, Naples, Trento) and is currently fellow at the Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”.

01.06.2021 - 31.07.2021

Heilmann, Katrin

Katrin Heilmann is a historian of modern China with a particular interest in writing military history back into broader histories of the People’s Republic of China. She defended her PhD thesis in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP). Katrin worked as a research assistant for the AHRC-funded project the Mao-era in Objects. She completed a master’s degree as a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where she co-organised the inaugural Yenching Global Symposium. She holds a MA (hons) Chinese and History from the University of Edinburgh.

01.06.2021 - 31.08.2021

Wozniak, Thomas

Thomas Wozniak was born in Quedlinburg and grew up as an active Catholic under the communist regime of the GDR. When the Wall came down he did his civil service instead of joining the army and worked with disabled people in Tabgha/Israel. After returning overland by bike tracing the crusaders he studied history. For the analysis of three late medieval taxation lists, which came to light during renovation work in his father’s house, an old half-timbered building, he earned his M.S. After he completed his dissertation “Quedlinburg in the 14th and 16th Century” at the University of Cologne in 2009 he worked at the University Marburg until 2015 and finished his habilitation (second book) about “Natural events in Early Middle Ages” in 2017 in Tübingen. This was followed by professorships (Professurvertretung) in Tuebingen and Munich and a guest lectureship at Weber State University in Ogden/USA.

Frühjahr 2019

HORNG, Shu-ling (洪淑苓)

Shu-ling Horng (洪淑苓) has a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from the National Taiwan University, and she is currently a professor at the Department of Chinese Literature of National Taiwan University. She was once the professor & the Chair of Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature in 2011-2014. She was a visiting professor in UCSB in 2009. Prof. Horng specializes in modern Chinese and Taiwanese poetry and in Chinese and Taiwanese folk literature. In the past few years, she has undertaken research into many projects about modern Chinese and Taiwanese contemporary poetry, women's studies, and the culture of folk festival from classical poetry. Recently she published academic books like Female Study in Taiwanese Folk Literature (2013); Self-inscription and Spatiotemporal Writing: Eight Contemporary Taiwanese Female Poets (2014 ); Solitude & Aesthetics: Nine Contemporary Taiwanese Poets(2016).

Her project during her stay in Heidelberg is to research “Everyday Writing of Contemporary Chinese Poetry by Female Poets.” She started working on the project at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies in April and May 2019.