11/09/2025, Essen
The current Senior Fellows at the College (left to right): Rashed Uz Zaman, Ingo Heidbrink, Qingxiu Bu, Daniel Feierstein, Tülin Şener, Lorraine Ryan, Sean Franzel, Nelson Zavale
Eight international scholars from the social sciences and humanities have started their fellowships at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr in Essen where they will spend the next six months working on collaborative research projects.
The distinguished researchers from universities in Argentina, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the USA are part of the fourth cohort of the international Senior Fellowship Programme offered by the College for Social Sciences and Humanities since 2023. Starting in September, the visiting scholars are working in tandem partnerships with members of the University Alliance Ruhr for the next six months.
At the Welcome Day on 9 September, the College’s Scientific Board warmly welcomed the Senior Fellows in Essen, wishing them a fruitful and inspiring stay. The fellows and their tandem partners presented an outlook on their research agendas and the academic events they will be hosting as part of their fellowships. The rich variety of research areas encompasses transnational law, genocide studies, maritime history, journal-literary research, intercultural developmental psychology, memory studies, international relations, and higher education and science studies. In a weekly colloquium, Senior Fellows and researchers at the College will discuss their current research across disciplines.
The international Senior Fellowship Programme promotes sustainable international partnerships and research cooperation in the social sciences and the humanities. Through an annual call for applications, usually published in the spring, the College for Social Sciences and Humanities selects up to 20 internationally recognised scholars for research stays within the University Alliance Ruhr.
Qingxiu Bu is Reader in Global Law at the University of Sussex, UK. His particular focus is on the development of legal infrastructures in transnational law and global governance. Together with Thomas Feldhoff (Ruhr University Bochum), he will comparatively examine data governance in the EU, USA, and China, and the role of Africa under the Agenda 2063 of the African Union. The project’s aim is to articulate a strategic vision for the reshaping of global data governance.
Daniel Feierstein is Director of the Center of Genocide Studies at the National University of Tres de Febrero, Argentina, and Senior Researcher at the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET). His work primarily focuses on genocidal social practices. The joint project with Christian Gudehus (Ruhr University Bochum) will analyse identity transformations occurring in the aftermath of different genocidal settings during the 20th century in Turkey and Iraq.
Sean Franzel is Professor of German at the University of Missouri, USA. His research focuses on the literary, intellectual and media history of the 18th and 19th centuries. With Nicola Kaminski (Ruhr University Bochum) he will be working on a research project that contextualises and theorises the serialised journal publication of a paradigmatic 19th-century historical novel, Theodor Fontane’s Vor dem Sturm, through the lens of journal-literary research and media history.
Ingo Heidbrink is a maritime historian and Professor of History at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, USA, specialising in inland waterway history, fisheries and whaling history, and polar history. With his tandem partner Frank Uekötter (Ruhr University Bochum) he will analyse why past electric propulsion systems failed to achieve permanent success and identify the prerequisites for a successful introduction for inland waterway navigation today.
Lorraine Ryan is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and an award-winning international researcher in the fields of Spanish literature, memory studies, and gender. With her tandem partner Susanne Zepp-Zwirner (University of Duisburg-Essen) she will apply the ‘Ordinary Men’ thesis to Spanish perpetrator memory during the Spanish Civil War as revealed in cultural texts. This approach offers a framework for understanding the behaviours of individuals in perpetrating violence.
Tülin Şener is Professor of Educational Psychology at Ankara University, Turkey. An expert in developmental psychology, her research spans child development, identity, well-being, parenting, youth participation and civic engagement with a focus on culturally contextualised perspectives. In her project with Philipp Jugert (University of Duisburg Essen), she will comparatively examine the ethnic-racial socialisation practices of German and Turkish-origin parents residing in Germany.
Rashed Uz Zaman is a researcher at the Department of International Relations of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He works on strategic and international security issues and on civil-military relations in Bangladesh. The joint project with Dennis Dijkzeul (Ruhr University Bochum, Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict) seeks to understand how countries contributing troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations engage with peacekeeping norms, including gender mainstreaming in human rights and domestic law.
Nelson Casimiro Zavale is Associate Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique, and an affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on questioning assumptions in Africa about the contribution of higher education, science, technology and innovation to socio-economic development. In his project with Uwe Wilkesmann (TU Dortmund University), he seeks to test an alternative approach of studying knowledge and technology transfer between academic and non-academic institutions in the Global South and the Global North, with a focus on Africa.
Detailed information about the Senior Fellows and their projects is available on the College's website:
