Two academics from Humanities faculties have been awarded half of four new Einstein Visiting Fellowships.
These Fellowships have been set up by Oxford University, the Berlin University Alliance and the Einstein Foundation, as part of their mission to deepen academic links across the Channel. The focus is on two of the biggest challenges of our time: global health and social cohesion.
The “Einstein BUA/Oxford Visiting Fellow” programme will allow top Oxford researchers to bed into the Berlin research landscape over a period of three years. The Fellows will work closely with their German academic counterparts, build working groups and employ post-doctoral students.
Our fellows are Professor Karen Leeder of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and Professor Stefano Evangelista of the Faculty of English Language and Literature.
The new fellowships recognise the need to go beyond short-term academic exchanges and will support researcher and graduate students to cross disciplines and open up new theoretical and methodological perspectives.
Professor Leeder said: "I am delighted to be partnering with Prof Jutta Müller-Tamm, the Temporal Communities hub, the Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule and the Freie Universität Berlin to take forward my new project ‘AfterWords’ as part of this new Einstein Fellowship. We hope this will be a major opportunity to inspire new research, make things happen, and promote graduate and ECR exchange in the areas of poetry, translation and performance. Watch this space! Here is some more information about the project."
Professor Evangelista said: "I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity by the Einstein Foundation. The Fellowship builds on my long-standing partnership with the Centre for British Studies of the Humboldt University, which I’ve developed thanks to a TORCH Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, as well as awards from the John Fell Fund and the AHRC. The Fellowship will enable me to recruit Berlin-based doctoral and post-doctoral students and to run a series of workshops in Berlin, in which I hope to involve Oxford graduates and colleagues from the English Faculty. During the Fellowship we’re also planning to host a summer session of the Harvard Institute of World Literature. I hope that the Fellowship will strengthen the links between Oxford and Berlin and lay the foundations for new collaborations."
Professors Andrew Hurrell and Cigdem Issever, Academic Co-Directors of the Partnership, said: "The appointment of four new Einstein Visiting Fellows is a further important step in the development of the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership, promoting world-class research across a range of disciplines and deepening academic collaboration."
Professor Martin Rennert, Chairman of the Board, Einstein Stiftung Berlin, added: "This collaboration benefits both research and society. We are delighted to deepen the partnership between these two centres of excellence and pool their individual strengths."
