FSP Fellowships

2025 | Constructed Spaces - Spatial Constructs

As part of the FSP Fellowships, the Research Area Cultural Encounters - Cultural Conflicts once again invited three fellows in 2025. This time, the focus was on inter- and transdisciplinary studies on Third Space. The programme investigated how the concept of thirding - the discursive production of space - can be applied to relations between the heartland and the peripheral zones of empires or great powers. The material and archaeological traces of this phenomenon as well as the sociolinguistic factors for the production of space are being researched. The aim is to analyse the effects of spatial concepts and perceptions on cultural developments and thus open up new perspectives for the study of ancient empires and geopolitics. The fellows' individual projects aim to expand previous perspectives through broad, theory-led research. The fellows have contributed in various ways to the ongoing interdisciplinary research on space within the doctoral programme "Entangled Antiquities".

This year's scholarship holders were:

• Tania Puente (Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires)
• Alejandro Mizzoni (University of Buenos Aires)
• Giorgio Paolo Campi (University of Warsaw)

2024 | Environmental Humanities in Mountain Regions

In recent years, the environmental humanities have developed as a new field of research in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies. Based on the assumption that environmental issues are not the sole domain of the natural and technical sciences, but must be considered primarily on the basis of interdisciplinary approaches, new perspectives on environmental research are currently emerging. While in this field the humanities and cultural studies focus on the ecological crises of our time in active dialogue with the natural sciences, we want to devote particular attention to human-environment relationships in Alpine regions.
We scrutinise these relationships with regard to their historical and contemporary conceptions and examine them as cultural inscriptions of meaning in their various dimensions. The focus is on diverse forms of inequality as the result of hierarchising processes that place human and more-than-human life in different relationships to the surrounding environments. The multi-relational interweaving of these socio-cultural dynamics with ecological processes and changes in alpine regions is the focus of our research interest.

Our scholarship holders were:

• Fizza Batool (University of Central Punjab)
• Michal Durco (Slovak Academy of Sciences)
• Christine Le Jeune (University of Florida)

2023 | Played Empathy - Gespielte Empathie

This year, the Research Area Cultural Encounters - Cultural Conflicts once again invited three fellows to Innsbruck to dedicate themselves to their own research and to network with colleagues and students on site. The thematic focus of "Played Empathy" - organised by Game Studies Research Group - enables a variety of disciplinary approaches. What different concepts of empathy can be applied to games? How do games generate empathy, and how is this generation linked to their specific mediality? How does the concept of empathy change in machine-mediated digital games? These are just some of the questions that were addressed during the stay at the University of Innsbruck.

Our scholarship holders were:

• Daniela Wentz (Ruhr University Bochum) | Reconquering Empathy? Therapy Games and Neurodivergent Disaffection
• Marko Jevtic (University of Konstanz) | Experiential Racism, Identity Tourism and the (Black) Power Fantasy in Video Games
• Laura Op de Beke (Oslo University) | Anthropocene Temporalities in Videogames: The Anthropocene as a Structure of Feeling in Popular Gameplay

2022 | Crises of Solidarity - Crises of Solidarity

This year, the FSP invited researchers from various disciplines (in particular philosophy, political science, sociology, history, literature and cultural studies, cultural and social anthropology, Educational Sciences) to address questions of solidarity. This is based on the observation that solidarity plays a central role in many current social crises - such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated health crisis, the global housing crisis and the climate crisis: From solidarity with so-called vulnerable groups in the context of corona to the problem of solidarity-based redistribution in the context of housing to the challenge of an environmental policy that must show solidarity with future generations, we are currently dealing with a broad social problematisation of solidarity(s). The humanities and cultural studies are thus faced with the task of reflecting anew on the phenomenon of solidarity and sounding out the potentials and limits of the concept of solidarity.

Embedded in a dense programme of interdisciplinary exchange, concluding workshop was a central element of this year's fellowships.

Our fellows were:

• Sarah Teufel (University of Giessen) | What can solidarity (not) do? An attempt at a contemporary and unsentimental definition of the term
• Mareike Gebhardt (University of Münster) | Un-Possible Solidarity: Civil Sea Rescue as a Practice of the Coming Democracy?
• Thomas Telios (University of St. Gallen) | Solidarity as Inclusion: Holism, Difference, Collectivity. Towards a social-ontological approach of solidarity.

2020/2021 | The "Rural City"

The paradox of the "rural city" describes a transhistorical characteristic of so-called borderlands: Through mega-spatial interdependencies and interactions, 'modern' achievements of urban centres of power also reach rural regions where rural life and local customs predominate. In such a rural environment, local adaptations of urbanity and cosmopolitanism are elite forces that threaten to undermine traditional structures of order and authority. This potential for conflict is balanced out by the archaisation and sacralisation of old customs into 'invented traditions', which are anchored in the deepest layers of local settlement history through cultic re-enactment and fixed-calendar repetition.

The scholarships were integrated into the Innsbruck excavation projects "Ascoli Satriano" (southern Italy) and "Monte Iato" (Sicily) via the concept of the "rural town" (https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/ascoli-satriano/index.html.de; https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/monte-iato/index.html.de; xxx). The scholarships were also linked to the workshop "The 'Rural City': Forms of Localisation of Urbanity in the Hinterland and Inland" (https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/monte-iato/veranstaltungen/downloads/workshop-innsbrucknovember-2021.pdf).

Our scholarship holders were:

• Theresa Rafflenbeul (Ruhr University Bochum) |"Heraklea Minoa as a 'rural' city"
• Frerich Schön (University of Tübingen) |"πολισμάτιον - oppidum - municipium: rural towns of the central Mediterranean from the frog perspective of Tübingen field research projects"

2019/2020 | European cultural studies research

European cultural studies research in Innsbruck focuses on the images of the continent that have emerged both within and outside Europe since modern times, as well as the associated social and cultural practices that have contributed to the politics and economics, lifeworlds and mentalities of European societies in the past and present. Perceptions of observers within and outside Europe, practices of the social order of the European space, transnational networks and forms of communication as well as the imaginations of different actors on what 'Europe' is or should be characterise the perspectives on the continent. In this way, 'Europe' emerges as a polyphonic space of discourse and resonance in which identity and alterity, inclusion and exclusion, legitimacy resources and values are negotiated.

Organised by the FZ European concepts, the scholarships were embedded in the "European November: Perspectives on European cultural studies research".

Our scholarship holders were:

• Romuald Valentin Nkouda (École Normale Supérieure de Maroua) | "Colonial photography: cultural forms of perception and mediatisation of transnational visual memory. The example of Cameroon and Germany (1850-1918)"
• Elisa Tizzoni (Università di Pisa) | "Cultural encounters, cultural clashes: the Eec and intra-European migration trough a cultural perspective"
• Clara Verri (Justus Liebig University Giessen) | "The Erosion of European Values? Dissatisfied Forms of 21st-Century Life in the Novels of Karl Ove Knausgård and Michel Houellebecq"

2018/2019 | Multilingualism

In recent years, multilingualism as a topic of research has become much more intensive, condensed and differentiated in many humanities, cultural and social science disciplines and plays an important role not least in the Research Area. The perceived acceleration of globalisation through urbanity, migration and media networking, as well as the associated increasing flexibility and plurality of social affiliations, are central social triggers for the growing interest in research. Multilingualism as an observable phenomenon in religious, political, administrative, scientific and literary texts and other cultural testimonies, on the other hand, has a long history. It is therefore necessary to discuss questions of multilingualism across disciplinary boundaries.

The scholarships were part of the multidisciplinary event series "Multilingualism", which was organised by the relevant Colloquium, and were linked to the workshop "Multilingualism", among others.

Our scholarship holders were:

• Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić (University of Rijeka) | "Linguistic landscapes at the margins: Performativity of ethnic belonging and memory politics in Croatian postconflict border regions"
• Jana Maria Weiß (FU Berlin) | "'One and a Thousand'. Paul Celan's poetics of multilingualism"
• Gina Wrobel (Ohio State University) | "Beyond (and in) the Classroom: Exploring Refugees' Multilingual Literacy Practices in Germany"

2017/2018 | Superdiversity

In the context of migration and mobility, access to material and immaterial resources such as participation in public discourse, but also social symbols, languages and literature, has been and continues to be multi-layered and unequal. Social plurality thus develops along different criteria and differentiating features. This complex situation has developed into a post-migrant normality that has become constitutive not only for migrants, but also for Central European host societies. The paradigm of superdiversity - structurally related to that of intersectionality, for example - is intended to serve as a conceptual point of reference for discussing what constitutes society under the conditions of border and migration regimes.

The scholarships were linked to the workshop "Superdiversity and Transnational Capital: Current Debates and Tendencies in Migration Research", which was organised by the DK Dynamics of inequality and difference in the age of globalisation.

Our scholarship holders were:

• Marlene Gärtner (University of Konstanz) | "Narrating migration at home and abroad. Global power dynamics and their master narratives in Cameroon and the Cameroonian diaspora"
• Miriam Gutekunst (LMU Munich) | "Governing migration through marriage. Negotiations, conflicts and transversal movements at Europe's borders"
• Dillon Newton (University of Salford) | "Migration, Capital and Belonging: A Narrative Exploration of Longsight, Manchester"
• Tanja Višić (Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) | "Ethnography of living arrangements, informal work and the transnational care: Experiences of domestic workers from the former Yugoslavia in Germany"

2016/2017 | Narrative

Humans are "storytelling animals". Storytelling is also social action - and not least an act of self-production and self-presentation. The narrative, it seems, rules in its own realm; it can, but does not have to worry about congruence with external reality. At the same time, the narrative itself has no intrinsic signs of truth. Rather, it mixes elements of truth, appearance, hearsay, ignorance, error and lies. Whoever speaks of 'homo narrans', of the narrating human being, thinks of the human being in his ability to say both yes and no to the reality in which he lives, morally speaking: to lie. Or more precisely: to suspend the difference between real and unreal, true and false, to cancel it out, to play with it.

The scholarships were linked to the "Storytelling between fact and fiction" workshop.

Our scholarship holders were:

• Mario Huber (University of Graz) | "From perceived unease to legal crisis: narration between fact and fiction in the Weimar Republic"
• David Schmiedel (University of Magdeburg) | "Analysing Beliefs Religion And Hallowing Attributions in Modern Society"
• Franziska Stürmer (University of Würzburg) | "Transcultural Identity Construction in the Contemporary Family Novel"

2015/2016 | Theory

In his highly acclaimed study "The Long Summer of Theory. Geschichte einer Revolte" (2014), Philipp Felsch does not deal with relevant theories of the late 20th century theoretically or discursively, but rather recounts their history of reception, transforming theory into a narrative that ascribes to it a specific historicity rather than a timeless significance. In this way, the interest in (incomprehensible) theories, which is usually located in the academic environment but is by no means limited to the universities, is contextualised in terms of the history of time and publishing. This makes it clear that and how theory in a certain milieu at a certain time not only characterised the thinking but also the attitudes and identity politics of many individuals. We take this approach as an opportunity to explore the current status of theory in academic and non-academic environments in more detail.

The scholarships were linked to the workshop "So tell me, what's your theory?".

Our scholarship holders were:

• Nora Bischoff (FU Berlin) | "'Mein sehnen war ganz for anders.' - Wanderschaft als alternativer Lebensentwurf im 20. Jahrhundert?"
• Katharina Kreuzpaintner (HU Berlin) | "'Ideology of freedom of ideology'. Theory formation from German Philology to media studies using the example of the German Department of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 1960-1990"
• Eva-Maria Müller (GCSC Gießen) | "Othering Mountains: Postcolonial Perspectives on Literatures of the Canadian Rockies and the Austrian Alps"