Social Sciences Going Public - Research and Practice with, in and for the Society

University of Tübingen

Gabriele Alex is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Tübingen. She gained her PhD from Brunel University and joined Tübingen University in 2010. Her thematical interests include medical anthropology and anthropology of childhood. She is editor of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology. She is currently working on an edited volume on COVID-19 experiences in India and Germany, her most recent publication is Alex, Gabriele (2022) “Working Lithographs, from devotion to antiquity’ in ‘Practices of Transformation – Transformation of Practices: Essays in Honour of Helene Basu, edited by Julia Koch et.al, Universität Münster, pp.233-251.

Heidrun Eichner is Professor of Islamic studies and has joined the University of Tuebingen in 2010. She gained her PhD in Bochum and her habilitation in Halle an der Saale. She has been a senior fellow at the Maimonides Center of Advanced Studies at the University Hamburg (in 2021 and in 2018), a visiting professor at FU Berlin in the ERC-project Theological Rationalism in the World of Medieval Islam (2009-2010), a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at MLU Halle (2006-2009), and a visiting research associate at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal (2004-2006). Heidrun Eichner is currently working on divine attributes and conceptions of the soul in early Islamic theology. Publications include: Co-edited volume with Matthias Perkams and Christian Schäfer: Islamische Philosophie im Mittelalter. Ein Handbuch. Darmstadt (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) (400 p.) 2013.

Dorothee Kimmich is since 2002 Professor for Literary and Cultural Studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. She is head of the Tübinger Poetik-Dozentur, a jury member of the Würth-Literaturpreis and one of the co-ordinators of the binational M.A. study programme „Etudes franco-allemandes“ that is established between the Université de Provence in Aix-en-Provence and Tübingen University. Since 2020 Dorothee Kimmich has been co-coordinator of the CIVIS Hub 'Society, Culture, Heritage'. Publications include: Kimmich, Dorothee (2018) ‘Ins Ungefähre: Ähnlichkeit und Moderne’. Konstanz University Press.

Sebastian Thies holds the chair for Ibero-American Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Tübingen. After a PhD at the University of Osnabrück, he was Junior Professor for Hispanic Literary and Media Studies and then Associate Professor for Inter-American Studies at the University of Bielefeld. He has directed the doctoral studies programme ‘Entangled Temporalities in the Global South’ and was one of the coordinators of the BMBF/DAAD thematic network ‘Futures under construction in the Global South’. Currently, he is vice-director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies. His research interests include Global South Studies and Latin American literature, film and media studies. He recently co-edited The Routledge Handbook to the Culture and Media of the Americas.

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens 

Vassiliki Chryssanthopoulou is Associate Professor of Folklore Studies, at the Faculty of Philology, School of Philosophy, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. She obtained her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Social Anthropology at Oxford University, U.K. She is a member of the CIVIS Hub 2 Council since 2021 and co-chair for Hub 2: Society, Culture and Heritage since January 2023. Her thematical foci include: Migrants and refugees; Memory and trauma; Ethnicity, diaspora, regionalism and transnationalism; Digital ethnography; Religion, ritual and cosmologies, Public folklore and heritage; Museums and archives; Theory and history of Folklore in Greece; Folklore, anthropology and education. Her most recent publication is:

Vassiliki Chryssanthopoulou, (2022) ‘Migration, diasporic lives and identity formation: An ethnographic case study of the Castellorizian Greek diaspora in Australia over the past 130 years’, in O. Anastasakis, M. Pratsinakis, F. Kalantzi, A. Kamaras (eds.), Diaspora Engagement in Times of Severe Economic Crisis. Greece and Beyond, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 315-345.

Georgios Kouzas is Assistant Professor of Urban Folklore at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and also adjunct lecturer at the Hellenic Open University. In his thesis he analysed the sectors of Urban Folklore and Urban Ethnography, and in particular beggary in Athens today. His thematical foci include: Modern forms of orality, Urban ethnography and urban cultures. His most recent publication is: G. Kouzas(2023) ‘Work and commercial networks of Bulgarian and Albanian rag and bone traders in the open-air rag and bone market in Athens Today’,published in the  Journal of Urban Anthropology 20 (2023), 44-54.

University of Bucharest

Ioana-Ruxandra Fruntelată is  Associate Professor with the Department of Cultural Studies – Division of Ethnology and Folklore, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest and also Senior researcher, Institute of Ethnography and Folklore „Constantin Brăiloiu”, Romanian Academy. She gained her Ph.D. degree with a thesis on Personal Narratives – from Experience to Narrative at the University of Bucharest.

She is also a member of the National Comission for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, Ministry of Culture, Romania and has contributed to submittting to UNESCO the multinational files: Men's group colindat – Christmas time ritual in Romania and the Republic of Moldova and Cultural practices associated to the first of March in Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova and Romania, inscribed on the Representative List of Intangible Heritage of UNESCO in 2013 and 2017.

Adrian Stoicescu is an Associate Professor of Ethnology at the Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest. He got his PhD with a thesis on gender studies in oral epics from the University of Bucharest in 2011 and was a fellow of the Romanian Academy in the field of digital ethnography. His research interests are digital anthropology / ethnography, vernacular cultures and the study of everydayness. One of his latests publications is Stoicescu, Adrian (2022), ‚Pandemic Memes as Collective Coping and Retreat‘, in Philologica Jassyensia, XVIII, no. 2 (36), pp. 293-304 (indexed WoS).

Gabriel Tamaș is an assistant professor at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, Department of Cultural Studies - Ethnology. He got his PhD with a thesis exploring the reinterpretation of myths and the process of heroification in contemporary comics, from the University of Bucharest in 2023. His main research interests are the study of contemporary narratives, digital and urban culture and visual arts. He is currently working towards publishing his PhD thesis.