This October, we are welcoming our 13th group of KWI International Fellows and a new Thyssen@KWI Fellow. Seven researchers join us for the winter term of 2026/27. Read more about the researchers and their projects at KWI:
ELIZAVETA BEREZINA is a cultural historian whose work examines artistic and craft practices across different institutional and political contexts. At KWI, she will work on a comparative study of the institutions that organized craft production in selected state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.
YASMINA EL CHAMI is an architect and assistant professor in architectural humanities. Her work explores the architecture of informal imperial actors in the nineteenth and twentieth-century Eastern Mediterranean. At KWI, she will examine the role of American education in the shaping of scientific cultures in the post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean.
GAI FARCHI is a scholar of literature and cultural studies. His current research examines the intersection of witnessing discourse and generative AI aesthetics. At KWI, he will focus on the coexistence of generic aesthetics and hyper-personalisation in postindustrial and platform capitalism.
MARTIN HERRNSTADT is a historian of science and knowledge with a focus on the history of the humanities and social sciences from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As Thyssen@KWI Fellow, he will explore the history of the monographic method as a transnational tradition of applied environmental and social knowledge that emerged in the mining sciences.
ANNA NASSER is a historian of modern France and the European empires. Her research at KWI will investigate the intersection of decolonisation processes across France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium by focusing on how their late imperial policies influenced specific rights in the metropolitan space between 1945 and 1960.
AARON NEIMAN is a medical anthropologist studying the ways we seek, talk about, and conceive of therapy. His project at KWI will explore the rise of computer-automated therapy programs and the changes they have brought to popular and scientific understandings of mental health.
JUNGMO YOUN is a historian of media and culture whose research examines the formative process of capitalistic rationality in East Asia. At KWI, he will focus on the academic experiences of Chinese university students, from undergraduate studies in China to the completion of MA degrees in the UK and Hong Kong.
We highly encourage collaborations between our guest researchers and members of the UA Ruhr. If you are interested in connecting with our fellows or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Dr Ricarda Menn at ricarda.menn@kwi-nrw.de. More detailed information about the researchers, including their research interests, pictures, and CVs, can be found on the KWI homepage.
