Lupe Buch Fachliteratur

Research Training Group „Explorations in Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining”

Since 2025, six doctoral students in the Research Training Group research at the intersection of cultural studies, social sciences, arts and humanities. The Research Training Group is embedded in the Cluster of Excellence initiative “Imaginamics”.
Lupe Buch Fachliteratur
Image: Nicole Nerger (Universität Jena)

The Research Training Group focuses its activities on researching practices and dynamics of social imagination (shared social concepts, narratives and images). With its interdisciplinary approach, the Research Training Group provides a high contribution to a better understanding of social debates on topics such as climate change, political crises and the coronavirus pandemic.

Funded by the Thuringian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Research Training Group has six scholarships holders whose research topics are of high socio-political relevance. The scholarship holders are supervised by teams of Principal Investigators (participating scientists) from the Cluster of Excellence initiative “Imaginamics”. In addition, the scholarship holders will have access to the non-university cooperation facilities of the planned Cluster of Excellence and the LIBERTY profile of the University of Jena.

Kick-off event of the Research Training Group

On Thursday 10th April from 11:30 am to 2:00 pm the kick-off event of the Research Training Group will take place at the TrafoExternal link. Directly afterwards from 2:00 pm onwards the student congress "Imagine! Utopie und Dystopie als Praktiken sozialen Imaginierens" begins. The student congress is a cooperation between the Cluster of Excellence initiative "Imaginamics" and the Honours Programme. In advance for the student congress we would like to ask guests to register first. 

The program and further information for the kick-off event as well as for the student congress can be found here de.

PhD students

  • Francesca Casciotta
    Image: Francesca Casciotta
    Francesca Casciotta PhD project:
    "Intersubjectivity and imagination. A phenomeno-logical investigation of individual and social identity" (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Lambert Wiesing
  • Azia Lafleur
    Image: Azia Lafleur
    Azia Lafleur PhD project:
    "Patients Perspectives in Medical Museums. Towards a Pluralist History of Health, the Body and Medicine" (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Anja Laukötter
  • Jenny Merker
    Image: Jenny Merker
    Jenny Merker PhD project:
    "Colonial zoology in the early modern period. Practices of imagining animals in zoological
    collections and knowledge in the age of European expansion" (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Kim Siebenhüner
    Prof. Dr. Christina Brandt
  • John Norrman
    Image: Alanis Riepe
    John Norrman PhD project:
    "Kairos, Caricature and Crises: Crisis-Imagining in
    Illustrated Press during the European revolutions of 1848-1849" (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Johannes Grave
  • Carmen Pereyra
    Image: Studio 80, Leipzig
    Carmen Pereyra PhD project:
    "Narrating Crises, Contemporary Central European and Latin American Dystopian Fiction" (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Christoph Vatter
    Prof. Dr. Claudia Hammerschmidt
  • Aline Riedle
    Image: privat
    Aline Riedle PhD project:
    "Social imaginations and memory culture in civil
    society practice against the right in Thuringia"
    (working titel)

    supervisor:
    Prof. Dr. Anja Laukötter
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