Award of the Habilitation Certificate to Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko

Dr. habil. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko is a Polish-German sociologist of culture. In her habilitation thesis entitled "Kulturverschränkungen: Border Drawings, Border Crossings, and Bridges in Contemporary General Sociology," she deals with the problem of cultural comparison under the conditions of globalization. Based on empirical research, Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko addresses the issues of global migration across the borders of nation-states.

Thework focuses on our social world, which is characterized by the global mobility of people, ideas, and practices. Progressive mediatization and digitalization increasingly affect human modes of communication and action. Increasing pluralization is the consequence. This is sociologically interesting in that it is characterized by a number of ambivalences and paradoxes. For example, an ever-increasing heterogeneity due to global mobility is contrasted by a likewise growing supranational, economic synchronization due to increasing economic interdependencies. The fact of a synchronization of the non-simultaneous and an interlocking of homogenization and heterogenization tendencies in the social reality of multi-optionality forces us to break away from the classical models of culture and cultural comparison. Alternatives are needed that attempt to adequately describe and explain the problems of the present in their differentiated sociological terms.

In this context, Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko about the meaning of borders and under which socio-historical and power-political conditions who, when, where and how participates in processes of border drawing, border crossing and border shifting. It also examines how these processes relate to social inequalities, inclusion, and exclusion.

Beyond the current problems of a cross-border sociology, she determines her own position as a researching and teaching sociologist, which is characterized by consciously taking the position of a border crosser. She says: "My own scientific perspective as a sociologist thus becomes comparable to that of a nomad who, as a hermeneutic, is at home in the third space in between, on this side and on the other side of what is already known."

Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko received her PhD in social sciences from the University of Göttingen in 2010. Since 2020, she has been a research associate (post-doctoral position) at the Institute of Social Work at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. Prior to that, she was a fellow with the habilitation project at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Essen from 2015 to 2019 under the direction of Prof. Dr. em. Hans-Georg Soeffner, where she already worked as a research assistant and project manager from 2009 to 2013. 2013 to 2015 Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko worked as a substitute professor for Qualitative Methods at the University of Kassel. A native of Poland, she received her Master's degree in Cultural Studies from the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at Jagiellonski University in Krakow. Among the research interests of Dr. habil. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko include in particular the phenomena of cultural entanglement, such as interculturality, multiculturality, and transculturality, but also the topics of migration, foreignness, identity, and ethnicity. Theoretical foci are hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and biographical research. The habilitation procedure was chaired by Prof. Dr. Heidrun Herzberg with the reviewers Prof. Dr. Alexandra Retkowski, Prof. Dr. Birgit Behrensen and Prof. Dr. Christiane Hipp from the BTU as well as the reviewers Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Soeffner from the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen and Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht from the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the University of Bonn.

PROGRAM Beginning of the event 3 p.m.

Welcome by the Dean Professor Dr. Simone Schröder Presentation of the certificate for the Venia Legendi in General Sociology by the Vice Dean Prof. Dr. Ulrich Paetzold

- Music -

Greeting by the Chair of the Habilitation Commission, Prof. Dr. Heidrun Herzberg

Greeting by Prof. Dr. Alexandra Retkowski

Lecture "Cultural entanglements" Prof. Dr. Thea D. Boldt-Jaremko

- Get together / farewell from 4 p.m. -