Einstein Foundation Berlin Supports Numerous Projects at Freie Universität Berlin
Grants for Research Stays and Projects
№ 047/2019 from Feb 25, 2019
The Einstein Foundation Berlin has extended the funding for three scholars as Einstein Visiting Fellows at Freie Universität Berlin. The application for a new Einstein Junior Fellowship was also approved, as the Einstein Foundation announced on Monday in Berlin. Freie Universität will also benefit from funds in a new program, a so-called Einstein Circle. The title of the project in cooperation with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is “Global History.”
The Einstein Foundation has decided to extend the Fellowships for the following scholars by two years: Francisco Santos (Universidad de Cantabria, Santander/Freie Universität); Dimitri Gutas (Yale University, New Haven/Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies); Susan Merill Squier at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies. The Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies is based at Freie Universität Berlin; cooperation partners are Humboldt-Universität and the independent research institute Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. The Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies is based at Freie Universität; since 2012 Humboldt-Universität has been an important cooperation partner.
Einstein Visiting Fellows set up research groups in Berlin or continue an already existing research cooperation. Martin Lüthe, a junior professor of North American studies, is the recipient of an Einstein Junior Fellowship at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität. A scholar of North American studies, Lüthe investigates critical whiteness studies, a branch of research dealing with racism and discrimination in the United States, in which the construction of “whiteness” as a normative category is questioned. On the basis of selected case studies, Lüthe aims to demonstrate, among other things, how in the digital present, the way people are portrayed as “white” (or “black”) conditions their identity and affects their thinking and actions.
Funding was approved within the new funding program, Einstein Circle, for a group of researchers at Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität, who wish to address global history together. The aim of the researchers is to investigate questions about the processes and effects of ongoing globalization from a global-historical perspective. The team includes historians Sebastian Conrad and Ulrike Freitag (both at Freie Universität Berlin) and Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). They plan to build on, as well as expand, the existing collaboration between the two universities.
Altogether the Einstein Foundation approved grants totaling around 6.4 million euros for new positions, structures, and projects at the Berlin universities.