Visiting Professors
PD Dr. Udo Bröring studied biology, mathematics and philosophy at the University of Oldenburg and graduated in biology. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Osnabrück from 1985 to 1986 followed by various positions both as lecturer and scientist at the University of Oldenburg and as consultant for the field of nature conservation and restoration from 1986 to 1994. In 1991 he received his PhD degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in the field of terrestrial ecology and biogeography followed by his habilitation at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus in 2002. Since 1994 Udo Bröring is an academic staff member at the Department of Ecology of the BTU Cottbus (now BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg).
Dr. Sacha Kagan has been active for more than 15 years in the fields of sociology of the arts and urban research, and is among the pioneers of arts-based sustainability research. He authored over 70 publications and intervened at about 130 events in 32 countries across the world.
He was from 2005 to 2018 a Research Associate at Leuphana University Lüneburg, co-led the transdisciplinary research project ‘Stadt als Möglichkeitsraum’ (2015–2018), was coordinator of Research Network ‘Sociology of the Arts’ at the European Sociological Association (2015–2017), and founding coordinator of the international level of the ‘Cultura21’ network (2007–2016).
Prof. Angela Krewani is professor for Media Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Her work focuses on aesthetics and theory of digital media as well as on description and analysis of ecological systems.
Dr. Chunglin Kwa is a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. He was Faculty Fellow at Harvard University, 1999–2000. His work has focused on the history of ecology, and on the general history of science. Kwa is the author of Styles of Knowing: A History of Science from Ancient Times to the Present (Pittsburgh, 2011), and most recently of an article about landscapes in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018/2).
Carly Lave investigates concepts of machines as humanized: their cultural and virtual manifestations, personification, and enhancements that allow them to be more ‘human’, and even bodily. As a choreographer, she derives knowledge and thrill from creating alternative realities and futures onstage which propose avant garde relationships between man and machine.
Dr. Ingmar Lippert is a sociologist of the environment, science and technology. His research focuses on infrastructures for environmental governance. Until 2018 he worked as assistant professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and is now at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin. Before, he worked at National University of Singapore, studied sociology at Augsburg & Lancaster, and ERM at BTU. He lead-edited a special issue on ‘Environmental management as situated practice’ (Geoforum, 2015) and awaits the special issue ‘Numbering, Numbers and After Numbers’ (Science & Technology Studies, 2018), co-edited by him and Helen Verran.
Ulrich Petschow is economist and head of the research field Ecological Economics and Environmental at Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung, Berlin. Currently, his work focuses on innovation and transformation regarding new approaches on production and consumption, analysis of design approaches of new technologies (nanotechnology, bionics) and production patterns (e.g. 3D printing and distributed production) while paying attention to challenges of transdisciplinary research approaches.
Dr. rer. nat. Norman Pohl is head of Historicum and research fellow of the chair of History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at the Institute of Industrial Archaeology and History of Science and Technology at TU Bergakademie Freiberg. His research focuses on History of Chemistry, Environmental History and University History. He is longstanding member of the management comitee of Deutsche Wasserhistorische Gesellschaft e.V., honorary member of Verein Deutscher Ingenieure and has been awarded the Carl-Gottlieb-Gottschalk-Preis by the faculty of Business Administration at TU Bergakademie Freiberg for outstanding merits concerning teaching and supporting students.
Prof. Dr. Kirsten Twelbeck has taught American Studies at the universities of Hannover, Göttingen, Berlin (FU) und Augsburg. Right now she is Acting Professor for American Studies at Regensburg University. Apart from many articles in scholarly journals and anthologies she has written two monographs: No Korean is Whole, Wherever He or She May Be (2002) and Beyond the Civil War Hospital: The Rhetoric of Healing and Democratization in Northern Reconstruction Writing (1861-1882) (2014). Many of her publications focus on the multiple connections between cultural contact and aesthetic form, asking about the various functions of cultural artefacts in broader, and more complex, relations of exchange. This also lies at the heart of her current research project in the Environmental Humanities about the cultural dimension(s) of the wheat. Cast as a Global Player with a strong cultural component the wheat connects well with her other fields of interest, especially in the fields of Transpacific, Transatlantic and Postcolonial Studies but also with her more narrowly political research topics such as Nation Building and democratization.
Hubert Zapf is Professor of American Studies and Co-Director of Environmental Humanities at the University of Augsburg, Germany. He is an Advisory Board Member of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment, of the Lexington Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series, Rowman & Littlefield, and of the Elements in Environmental Humanities Series, Cambridge University Press. His publications include Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie, Niemeyer, 2002; Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte (ed.), Metzler, 3rd ed. 2010; American Studies Today: New Research Agendas (co-ed.), Winter, 2014; Literature and Science (ed.), Special Issue of Anglia 2015; Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (ed.), 2016; Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts, Bloomsbury, 2016; ‘Ecological Thought and Literature in Europe and Germany’, A Global History of Literature and Environment, Cambridge University Press: 269-285, 2016; Ecological Thought in German Literature and Culture (co-ed.), Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Andreas Pohlmann studied Modern German Literature, Art History and Constitutional, Social and Economic History in Bonn. Written his dissertation about constructivist painter Leo Breuer, Andreas Pohlmann curated at August-Macke-Haus Bonn for one year. Afterwards, he commenced his work as a publicist. As part of this occupation, he uses digital photo techniques since 1997, especially high-end colour image processing for art catalogues. His artistic photography focuses on new, experimental perspecitves on natural structures, patterns and rhythms, as well as on displaying connections between technical-scientific and cultural fields. With his fellow artist Hermann Josef Hack he hosted numerous art projects in Germany and around the world, focusing on social impacts induced by global changes (e.g. climate refugees).
Dr. Jens Soentgen is a philosopher and chemist, serving as academic director of the Environmental Science Center at University of Augsburg. Since 2016 he is also Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Memorial University in St. John’s, Canada. Since 2012 he co-edits the journal GAIA Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society. Soentgen published widely on environmental philosophy, the history and theory of chemistry as well as on the specifics of individual materials, both for the scientific community and for general readers. Among his price-winning books are Von den Sternen bis zum Tau (From stars to dew), 2011, and Wie man mit dem Feuer philosophiert (How to philosophize with fire), 2014. Upcoming are the volumes Ökologie der Angst (Ecology of fear) and Konfliktstoffe (matters of conflict). In his work he combines the expertise of the chemist, experimenter and thinker with connoisseurship of even remote areas of the cultural and intellectual history of alchemy and the philosophy of materials both in the industrialized north and in the global south.