From January to March, he will conduct research on conspiracy theories and their influence on how society deals with the presidential election at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. The aim of the residency program is to bring together American and German individuals from a wide range of disciplines, traditions, and perspectives.
When the Federal Foreign Office purchased Thomas Mann's former home in California in 2016, it was intended to become a place for reflection and discussion of common challenges. The program is supported by the Berthold Leibinger Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, the Bosch Foundation, and the Federal Foreign Office, among others.
Dr. Nils Kumkar studied sociology and economics in Göttingen and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed his doctorate in Leipzig in 2016 with a thesis on the crisis protests in the USA and Germany. Since 2016, he has held the role of research assistant at SOCIUM – Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy. His research focuses on social inequality, new media, protest and criticism, and in particular right-wing populism and conspiracy theories. He regularly communicates the results of his research to a broad public in the press and on the radio, thus reaching beyond the specialist audience. In 2022, he published a much-discussed book with the Berlin-based Suhrkamp Verlag titled “Alternativen Fakten: Zur Praxis der kommunikativen Erkenntnisverweigerung” (“Alternative Facts: The Practice of Communicative Knowledge Refusal”).
More Information:
https://www.vatmh.org/en/tm-grant-recipient-details/grant/612-kumkar.html
Contact:
Dr. Nils C. Kumkar
University of Bremen
SOCIUM – Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy
Phone: +49 (0)421 218-58620
Email: kumkar@uni-bremen.de
