Academic advisory board
PROF. María del Pilar Blanco (Chair)
Professor María del Pilar Blanco is a specialist in Spanish American literature at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on modernismo, science and literature, spectrality, and global modernisms. She is currently completing her second monograph, Modernist Laboratories, supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship. She was co-investigator of the AHRC-funded network Science in Text and Culture, which led to the edited volume Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (2020). Her previous publications include Ghost-Watching American Modernity and two co-edited volumes on spectrality.
PROF. DR. Volkhard Krech
Prof. Dr. Volkhard Krech is Professor of Religious Studies at Ruhr University Bochum and Director of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES). He also leads the Collaborative Research Centre 1475 “Metaphors of Religion” and serves as spokesperson for the interdisciplinary graduate program RePliV. His research focuses on the theory of religion, religious evolution, pluralization and globalization, sacralization processes, and the relationship between religion, violence, and the arts. He also has a strong interest in the history of the academic study of religion.
PROF. DR. Thomas Lemke
Prof. Dr. Thomas Lemke holds the Chair of Sociology with a focus on Biotechnology, Nature, and Society at Goethe University Frankfurt. His work centers on biopolitics, governmentality, and the social implications of genetic and reproductive technologies. He studied political science, sociology, and law in Frankfurt, Southampton, and Paris, and completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Michel Foucault’s theory of power. He has held visiting positions at institutions including Goldsmiths, NYU, and Copenhagen Business School.
PROF. DR. Kate Rigby
Prof. Dr. Kate Rigby is an internationally recognized scholar in the Environmental Humanities. She holds the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Cologne and is founding director of the MESH research hub. Her work focuses on ecocriticism, Romanticism, multispecies studies, and climate-related cultural responses. Originally from Australia, she has held academic posts at Monash University and Bath Spa University. Her key publications include Reclaiming Romanticism and Dancing with Disaster. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
PROF. DR. Renata Salecl
Prof. Dr. Renata Salecl is a Slovenian philosopher, sociologist, and legal theorist. She serves as Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, and is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana. Her interdisciplinary research integrates law, psychoanalysis, and sociology, focusing on topics such as choice, anxiety, and the emotional dimensions of legal practice. She has held visiting professorships at institutions including the London School of Economics, Cardozo School of Law (New York), and King's College London.
Former Academic Advisory Board
PROF. DR. SHAIL MAYARAM (CHAIR)
Shail Mayaram is Honorary Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi and has been formerly Professor at the Centre. From 2019 to 2020, she was Co-Director of the International Center for Advanced Study (ICAS-MP), a Indo-German research collaboration of six Indian and German institutions. Her research include sub-altern pasts and moral imaginations of peasant, pastoral and forest-based communities. Furthermore, she is interested in Indic and Islamic knowledge traditions and works on Non/Political Islam, Heresy, and Martyrdom.
PROF. DR. SANTIAGO CÁSTRO-GÓMEZ
Santiago Castro-Gómez is a Colombian philosopher known for his genealogical work on colonial legacies in Colombia and for his critical studies on political philosophy. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Santo Tomás de Bogotá and at the University of Tübingen before he earned his doctorate at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt. Upon his return to Colombia he has been a professor at the Javeriana and Santo Tomás universities in Bogotá, as well as a researcher at the Instituto Pensar.
PROF. DR. CHRISTOF MAUCH
Christof Mauch is Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and Chair in American Culture at LMU Munich. He is President of the Foundation for Transatlantic Culture and Politics, an Honorary Professor at Renmin University in China, a former Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. and a Past President of the European Society for Environmental History. Mauch holds a Dr. phil. in Modern Literature (from Tübingen University) and a Dr. phil. habil in Modern History (from Cologne University). His current research interests include global and US environmental history and US culture and politics.
PROF. DR. ELAINE SCARRY
Elaine Scarry is the Cabot Professor of Aesthetics at Harvard University. Her work has two central subjects, the nature of physical injury and the nature of human creation. The Body in Pain argues that the willful infliction of pain is the opposite of creation, since it apes and inverts the ordinary work of the imagination. On Beauty and Being Just argues that beauty and justice are alike in having “injury” or “injustice” as their opposite. Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom shows that nuclear weapons and democratic governance are mutually exclusive; it specifies the constitutional tools available for dismantling the country’s nuclear architecture.
PROF. SUSAN PRESCOTT, MD PHD
Susan Prescott is a pediatrician and an immunologist, internationally recognised for her work on the early environmental determinants of health and disease, and promoting mutualistic value systems for ecological and social justice. In addition to more than 350 scientific publications, she is also an artist and award-winning author of several books. She is President of inVIVO Planetary Health, and Editor-in-Chief of Challenges journal which promotes interdisciplinary discourse. She holds a Professorship of Pediatrics at University of Western Australia, is a physician at Perth Children's Hospital, a Scholar at the Nova Institute, in Baltimore, USA, and Director of The ORIGINS project.
