Research Fellows

The ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, offers a thriving interdisciplinary research environment in the areas of media, communication and information. Involved disciplines include communication and media studies, computer science, cultural studies, educational science, studies in religion, and history. Since mid-2017, the ZeMKI invites applications from excellent researchers in the field of media, communication, and information.

Open Call for Fellowship Applications, 2023

(call closes on February 21, 2023, 23:59 CET)

Come and work with us! With our Fellowship programme we invite international researchers to Bremen for four weeks to deepen and connect their research in the transformation of media, communication and information. We are looking for established scholars (e.g. PhD/doctoral degree, professorship)  that want to enjoy the thriving interdisciplinary research environment at ZeMKI.

Involved disciplines include communication and media studies, computer science, film studies, educational science, studies in religion, and history. Since mid-2017, the ZeMKI has regularly hosted colleagues from all over the world. 

What we expect:

The duration of the fellowship is one month. Applicants should demonstrate experience in their respective field of research and a strong interest in working jointly with principal investigators at ZeMKI to develop new ideas together. The main focus of the ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellowship is to pursue a joint project together with at least two ZeMKI Labs (find the full list here: https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/labs). The joint project can take various forms and should aim to produce impact for academic and public debates in their respective area of scholarly focus. 

The following outputs are expected:

• a research paper submitted to the peer-reviewed “Communicative Figurations” working paper series 
• a public presentation in the ZeMKI Research Seminar 

For a successful application it is highly recommended to inform oneself about current activities in the ZeMKI Labs of interest and the work of principal investigators at ZeMKI.  

What we offer:

• Research Resources: Fellows are welcome and encouraged to make use of and connect with ZeMKI's research resources in the context of their collaboration with ZeMKI labs, including the research studios, IT pools/technical equipment, cooperatives and initiatives.
• Access to the State and University Library Bremen: All fellows will be provided with access to the central academic library of the U Bremen.
• Courses: Fellows are eligible to participate as listeners or guest lecturers in courses in the diverse media study programmes at ZeMKI. They have to individually ask for permission directly from the professor or lecturer.
• A honorarium of 3,000 euros plus a budget for research-related expenses of up to 1,500 euros 

What you need to submit in order to apply:

Please submit the following documents combined as a single PDF file: 

• A personal statement of 500 words max. on (1) your motivation to work with us, (2) your preferred period for the research visit (April to June or October to December). Please (3) indicate also the ZeMKI labs you would like to collaborate with.
• An up-to-date academic CV
• Proposed topic for the lecture in the ZeMKI Research Seminar

Application deadline: The closing date for receipt of applications is February 21, 2023 (23:59 CET). We are unfortunately unable to accept any late applications.

Please send your application as a single PDF file via e-mail to zemki-fellowshipprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de.

Download the flyer of the call here.

Prof. Dr. Phoebe V. Moore

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Phoebe V. Moore is Associate Professor for Political Economy and Technology at the School of Business of the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. She has been writing about work and worker struggle since 1997 when she lived in South Korea during the East Asian economic crisis, and her research highlights specific pressures workers face in contemporary and historical context. Her current research looks at the impact of technology on work from a critical perspective, looking at quantification through wearable tracking and algorithmic decision-making as a set of management techniques where control and resistance emerge as well as new risks of psychosocial and physical violence (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). Her previous work looked at the role of trade unions in international development and poverty policy in relation to International Labour Organization’s multilateral relationships (2014); subjectivity and the radical potentials of non-proprietary peer to peer production linking workers across virtual spaces (2009, 2011); and the globalization of worker education from a neo-Gramscian perspective where hegemony is not yet solidified, evidenced through consistent worker uprisings internationally (2005, 2006, 2007).

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Anamaria Dutceac Segesten is Senior Lecturer in European Studies at Lund University. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Univeristy of Maryland (USA) and has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Copenhagen. Research-wise, Dr. Dutceac Segesten has written extensively on the topic of nationalism, collective identity and conflict. She is currently driving several projects investigating the role of social media in democratic politics. Her pedagogical experience covers European Union politics, International Relations, Comparative Politics and East and Central European politics. Dr. Dutceac Segesten is co-founder of the European Studies discipline at Lund University. She has taught at universities in the United States and Scandinavia, where she has supervised over 40 theses at the under and post-graduate levels. She has been twice nominated for university-wide pedagogical awards. Dr. Dutceac Segesten is an active member of the SamTech think-tank, founded at Lund University for the purpose of providing expert advice on how technology impacts society, and of the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning network, which brings together engineers, data scientists, humanists, lawyers, and social scientists to discuss the development of AI and its practical, social, and ethical consequences.

Prof. Dr. Hillel Nossek

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Hillel Nossek is head of the research authority and head of the Communications Department of the Kinneret Academic College on the Sea of Galilee. Since October 2018, he is head of the Dan Shomron Institute for Research on Security, Society and Peace Studies. Among the academic positions he held in the past: Dean of the School of Communications, Head of the Research Authority and Head of the Teaching Authority of the College of Management Academic Studies, Chairman of the Israel Communication Association and Head of the Media, Public Opinion and Society Sector at the International Association for the Study of Mass Media. Editor of the Journal of the Israel Communication Association: Media Frameworks (from 2015). His primary research and publications include the consumption of new and old media, and their use for the construction of social identities; News in general and foreign news in particular (production, distribution, and consumption). He is also interested in the link between political violence, terrorism and media; Military and media relations in general, and military and security censorship in particular, as well as community communications and alternative media.

Prof. Dr. Michelle Stack

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Michelle Stack is Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Studies of the University of British Colubmia at Vancouver Campus, Canada. She is the author of Global University Ranking and the Mediatization of Higher Education, and she is editor of a second upcoming book on university rankings and journal impact factors. Michelle has led several courses and workshops focused on building the capacity of scholars and scholar-practitioners to engage media to expand policy debates.  She has also led community engaged research using photovoice and video. Michelle is an associate professor in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, winner of the 2017 Killam Award for Teaching, a public commentator on education and a former senior policy advisor.  Her central research interest concerns how people, knowledge and institutions are categorized and the influence of these categorizations on our ability to grapple with “wicked problems” including inequity and climate change.

Prof. Dr. Fernando Luiz Nobre Cavalcante

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Fernando Cavalcante is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Research at the Department of Communication at UNI7, Fortaleza, Brazil. He is also the coordinator of the Communication Research Center (NUPECOM) and member of the UNI7 Distance Learning Implementation Board. He is founder and senior researcher of the Ernst Manheim Public Opinion Laboratory. His main research focus is on the development of a software project for conversation analysis and interaction in instantaneous communication networks (WhatsApp) and focus group research analysis with Qualitative Data Analysis Software (ATLAS.ti).

Prof. Dr. Gregory Grieve

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Gregory Price Grieve is Professor and Head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He conducts research at the intersection of religion, popular culture and Buddhism, with a particular focus on religious practices that employ digital media, such as the Internet, virtual worlds, and video games. His most recent book, CyberZen (2016), explores Buddhist identity, community and religious practices in the virtual world of Second Life. Besides an accomplished researcher he is a decorated teacher, and an able administrator. In 2016, he was awarded the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor bestowed by the North Carolina system for superior teaching. Service also plays a pivotal role in his career, and he has served on over forty major committees, as the Head of the Department, and as the Chair of the College Assembly. Through his service to the profession he has shaped the field of digital religion by serving as an advisor to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Science Research Council, and has served as a series editor for Routledge and De Gruyter. Furthermore, he pioneered the study of digital religion during his six years as chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion and Popular Culture Group, and he is now chair of the AAR’s new Seminar on Religion and Digital Gaming. He is also a founding member of the International Academy for the Study of Gaming and Religion, and its new journal, Gamevironments. 

Prof. Dr. Chankyung Pak

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Chankyung Pak is Assistant Professor in Division of Business and Management (DBM) at Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNU-HKBU UIC). He is a computational social scientist who’s interested in the evolution of public discourse mediated by transforming media ecosystem. In most of his works, he tries to put media studies, information science and economics together. Currently, he works with Dr. Magdalena Wojcieszak  for an ERC project on backfire effects that follow exposure to dissimilar views online. While he is an avid learner of economic theory, mathematical argument and machine learning, he started as a cultural study scholar and still is looking to connect his research back with critical theories on algorithms and artificial intelligence. He recently defended his dissertation, “News Organizations’ News Link Sharing Strategies on Twitter: Economic Theory and Computational Text Analysis,” in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. He is also a former member of Behavior, Information and Technology Lab (BITLab).

Prof. Dr. Nicholas Baer

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2020

Nicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Groningen. He was a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the University of Chicago’s Society of Fellows at the rank of Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Humanities. He completed his PhD in Film & Media and Critical Theory in 2015 with a dissertation on the relationship between cinema and the crisis of historicism in the early twentieth century. Together with Anton Kaes and Michael Cowan, he edited The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (University of California Press, 2016), which won the Limina Award for the Best International Film Studies Book and the Award of Distinction for Best Edited Collection from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Baer’s research has been supported through yearlong fellowships from the Fulbright Program, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and Leo Baeck Institute / Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. He is also the recipient of the Karsten-Witte-Preis for best film essay of the year from the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft. 

Dr. Lisa Bolz

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Lisa Bolz studied communication science, history of science and transcultural studies in Münster, Rome, Heidelberg, Berlin and Paris. She was a doctoral student at the Universities of Paris-Sorbonne and Münster with a dissertation project on the journalistic format of the telegraphic agency devesche and on international news flows in the 19th century. From 2014 to 2017, she worked as a research assistant at the German Historical Institute in Paris, in 2017 she was a guest researcher at Stanford University and currently she is a research assistant at the Institute of Communication Studies (CELSA) at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Her work focuses on journalism research, press history, transcultural communication and digital research methods.

Dr. Maria Kyriakidou

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Maria Kyriakidou is a Lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture. Her research engages with the relationship between media and globalisation, with a particular focus on the mediation of distant suffering and global crises. Her current research focuses on the mediation of the European 'refugee crisis'. She has published work on audience engagement with distant disasters, the media coverage of the Euro crisis, and global media events. She is the vice-chair of the ECREA Communication and Democracy Section and of the new Temporary Working Group on the Ethics of Mediated Suffering.  Maria teaches BA modules on media, globalisation and journalism, and an MA module on media theory. Before joining Cardiff, Maria was a lecturer in Media, Cultural Politics and Communications at the University of East Anglia. She holds an MSc in Social and Public Communication and a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics. 

Dr. Sophie Knowles

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Sophie Knowles is a senior lecturer in journalism and programme leader, Journalism and Communications at the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at Middlesex University London. Her PhD based on a trination longitudinal study of the reporting of three financial crises. She has previously held research and teaching posts at: Murdoch University, Australia; City University, London; and the University of Cambridge. Her main areas of research have centred on the role of the media in  financial crises, and the way political economy is being shaped and represented by media and understood by the general public. Her publication The Reporting of the GFC and the Declining Quality in Mainstream Financial Journalism: A Longitudinal Tri-Nation Study was nominated for best paper at the ICA. Her book, Mediating financial crisis: watchdogs, lapdogs or canaries in the coalmine, is being published by Peter Lang in 2019 and explores the role of journalists in mediating finance and the economy during times of crisis. She co-edited the book Media and austerity: comparative perspectives and has publoished a paper on the media and financial capability. (Routledge 2018.) She also explores the implications of gender in the newsroom and in news content, and the ways inequality is being represented by the media. 

Dr. Lina Dencik

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Lina Dencik is Reader at Cardiff's School of Journalism, Media and Culture and Co-Founder/Director of the Data Justice Lab. Her research concerns the interplay between media developments and social and political change, with a particular focus on resistance and globalisation. Recently, she has moved into the areas of digital surveillance and the politics of data and worked on the ESRC-funded project Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society and the project Managing Threats: Social Media Uses for Policing Domestic Extremism and Disorder funded by the Media Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Lina has recently been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council and is Principal Investigator on the project DATAJUSTICE. With the Data Justice Lab, she has also worked on two further projects, Data Scores as Governance funded by the Open Society Fondations and Data Policies funded by IDRC India (in collaboration with IT for Change), and is currently working on a new two-year project Towards Democratic Auditing funded by the Open Society Foundations. She is the author of four books including Media and Global Civil Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Worker Resistance and Media: Challenging Global Corporate Power in the 21st Century (co-authored with Peter Wilkin, Peter Lang, 2015), and Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Emancipation and Control (co-edited with Oliver Leistert, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015). Her fourth book (co-authored with Arne Hintz and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen) Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society was published with Polity Press in 2018. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London and has previously worked at the Central European University in Budapest where she is still a Fellow with the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS). Prior to that she worked as a television producer/director at Brook Lapping Productions in London.

Dr. Simone Natale

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Simone Natale is Senior Lecturer at the University of Loughborough's Communication and Media department. His main areas of interest are media history and digital media. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Turin, Italy, in 2011, and has researched and taught in numerous international institutions, including Columbia University in New York, USA, Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Cologne in Germany, and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of a monograph, Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), and of articles published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Communication Theory, Media, Culture & Society, and Media History. He was awarded research fellowships by world-leading institutions such as the Humboldt Foundation and Columbia University’s Italian Academy. He is Assistant Editor of Media, Culture & Society.

Dr. Samuel Van Ransbeeck

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Samuel Van Ransbeeck is a research associate in Brazilian Studies at the University of Manchester. His background is in electronic music and interactive arts. He did his PhD at the Catholic University of Porto, Portugal, where he developed DataScapR, a sonification toolbox for composers and sound artists to make music using stock market data. After finishing his PhD, he has used this system to create sonifications in Milton Keynes to sonify energy usage, and Rio de Janeiro for the Outros Registros project. His research interests lie mainly in sonification, algorithmic composition, socially engaged art, interactive art, and Brazilian art.

Prof. Dr. Peter Lunt

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Peter Lunt is a Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, UK. His research interests include media audiences, public participation in popular culture (talk shows and reality TV), media regulation, consumption research and the links between media and social theory.
He has been interested in consumer studies or consumption research for over twenty years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was interested in what appeared to be a growing link between consumption and identity and particularly the way that regulatory changes were opening up personal finances allowing an increase in personal debt and accompanying shifts in social attitudes and ethical responses to consumer society. In audience studies and the study of popular culture he has worked mainly on the talk show genre which anticipated the increasing mediation of public participation which has developed in reality TV and new media. He originally (also with Sonia Livingstone) was interested in the links between the mediation of public engagement and political culture and the changing conception of public service media. He is still writing about talk shows and in recent years have been interested in sensational talk shows such as the Jerry Springer Show and the Jeremy Kyle Show. He is also working on other popular culture TV genres including makeover TV and am working (with Claire Lynch at Brunel) on the relation between identity, memory and history in Who Do You Think You Are?

Prof. Dr. Ghislain Thibault

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Ghislain Thibault is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal. He received his PhD in 2010 from the Université de Montréal before pursuing postdoctoral work at Harvard University. Appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2011, he later joined the Université de Montréal in 2015. His current research project explores the conceptual and historical relationships between machines and media in mid twentieth-century theories. His recent work in the cultural and material history of media and on the history of philosophy of technology has appeared in journals such as Canadian Literature and the Canadian Journal of Communication , Configurations and VIEW .

Dr. Jens Pohlmann

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Jens Pohlmann is Gerda Henkel Fellow for Digital History 2018-19 at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Furthermore, he is an Associate Researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. His research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st Century German Literature and Culture, Digital Humanities, Media Studies, and Transatlantic Internet Policy. Jens received his PhD from Stanford University in 2017 with a thesis on the marketing strategies of avant-garde authors in the German public sphere. He was a CESTA Graduate Research Fellow from 2015 to 2016 and is currently working on a comparative analysis of the internet policy discourse in Germany and the United States based on digital text corpora: “Free Speech, Regulation, and Democracy in the Digital Age - An Analysis of Transatlantic Internet Policy Differences in Germany and the United States."

Prof. Dr. Usha Raman

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2019

Usha Raman is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, India. Before entering academa in 2010, she worked as a freelance journalist and health communicator for over three decades, publishing on topics related to health, technology and women’s issues in a range of mainstream newspapers and magazines. She writes a column for one of India’s largest dailies, The Hindu, and edits a monthly magazine for school teachers, Teacher Plus. Usha received her doctorate in mass communication from the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA, in 1996. Her research interests include cultural studies of science, health communication, feminist media studies, and the social and cultural impact of digital media. At the University, she offers courses on basic and advanced writing, digital media and cyberculture, and health communication. She has also worked on a range of consulting projects on health promotion and behaviour change communication for the Indian Institute of Public Health (Hyderabad), UNICEF (India) and The George Institute for Global Health (India). While at MIT, she will be looking at curriculum development and delivery in digital media studies, apart from doing a series of interviews for an ongoing project on interdisciplinarity.

Dr. Ricardo Gaulia Borrmann

ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellow 2018

Where is “center” and where is “periphery” in cultural history? Those questions have followed Ricardo Borrmann throughout his academic track as cultural historian and political scientist. He is currently associated member of the research group Laboratório Cidade e Poder at the Historical Institute of the Federal University Fluminense (UFF), in Rio de Janeiro, and has recently finished his PhD at the University of Munich (LMU). In his doctoral thesis he studied the transatlantic circulation of ideas between Germany and Latin America through the reception of German speaking academics in Brazilian legal culture of the 19th Century. He also worked as editorial assistant of Passagens – International Review of Political History and Legal Culture. His mains research topics are Brazilian and Latin American History, transatlantic circulation of ideas, intellectual networks and legal culture. He has conducted researches in various archives worldwide, such as in Jena, Vienna, Oxford and Rio de Janeiro. In his current postdoctoral research he deals with Brazilian film critic Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes (1916-1977) and his international network. The research aims at approaching cultural circulation of ideas and Latin American intellectual Networks through the case of Salles Gomes, questioning common sense and fixed categories such as “center” and “periphery” in film history.