LWC, REAF, and SeeFField Welcome Visiting Professors
Meet and Greet with Students and Scholars at the University of Regensburg
11 May 2023
A multidisciplinary exchange in a relaxed atmosphere offering the chance to get to know each other academically and not least personally: Students and scholars at the University of Regensburg recently had the chance to meet and greet four visiting professors from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, and the United States of America. The recurrent event format was organized by the Leibniz ScienceCampus (LWC) "Europe and America in the Modern World" and REAF, the Regensburg European American Forum. The international guests were warmly welcomed by Dr. Birgit Hebel-Bauridl, member of the LWC Board and REAF Managing Director, Tamara Heger, REAF Administrative Manager, Dr. Paul Vickers, Manager of LWC and DIMAS, the Department of Interdisciplinary and Area Studies, and Dr. Aleksandra Salamurović, academic coordinator of the area studies project seeFField.
Tamara Heger (l.), REAF, Birgit Hebel-Bauridl, LWC and REAF, and Aleksandra Salamurović (r.), seeFField. Credit: Julia Dragan
Professor Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones is Carl A. Happold Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As a 2023 Leibniz ScienceCampus Visiting Professor, she comes to REAF and the University of Regensburg for the third time. The New Yorker is a historian of the United States, with expertise in American cultural and intellectual history, African American Studies, pre-colonial African history, and digital humanities. During her time in Regensburg, Jones will be teaching a seminar on transatlantic slavery and abolition. Jones is the author of “In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936”. Currently, she is working on her second monograph, “America in Africa: U.S. Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1821-1919”, which is under advanced contract with Yale University Press. Jones is among the principal investigators of the digital project “To Enter Africa from America: The United States, Africa, and the New Imperialism, 1862-1919”, and a Mellon Foundation funded project on the “US Law and Race Initiative”. On 17 May, colleagues are invited to her Brownbag session to learn more about her perspectives on area studies.
Jeannette Eileen Jones, Carl A. Happold Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Credit: Julia Dragan
Professor Dr. Daniela Koleva is a professor at the St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a visiting professor at seeFField during this summer semester. Koleva considers the numerous networking events of the various institutions and researchers involved in Regensburg’s area studies to be enriching. She appreciates the international atmosphere in her courses, she says, hosting students from the U.S., Malaysia, Romania, Portugal, and other countries. In her current projects, she is looking at the history of medicine and health care in Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Koleva is interested and involved in the field of ageing studies and deals with the history of gerontology in a transnational perspective.
Daniela Koleva, St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria. Credit: Julia Dragan
Dr. des. Katarina Damčević is an early career researcher from Croatia. Currently, she is completing her PhD project at the Institute of Semiotics at the Estonian University of Tartu. She is analyzing nationalistically motivated radical right-wing hate speech on social media. Of particular interest in her study is the slogan and greeting of the fascist Ustasha in Croatia, "Za dom - spremni!", which has been used since the 1930s. The semiotician is also interested how such commemorations are relevant for nation-building and which role they play in the national media discourse. Damčević is planning to delve deeper into this topic by investigating relevant symbols and conspiracy theories accordingly. As a passion she describes her interest in the art of academic writing: Katarina Damčević would be interested in teaching courses in this field, she says.
Katarina Damčević, University of Tartu, Estonia. Credit: Julia Dragan
Hikmet Karčić, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Credit: Julia Dragan
In 2022, Dr. Hikmet Karčić, University of Sarajevo, published the monography "Torture. Humiliate. Kill. Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp System". The book is among the first studies of the Serb camp system in the Bosnian war between 1992 and1995. The researcher analyzed issues of victimization, displacement and dispossession of non-Serbs. Karčić is very much interested in security policy issues and a guest commentator in the Israeli "Haaretz". He is currently organizing the first Sarajevo Security Conference, against the backdrop "that Russian influence in the Balkans has become increasingly serious since the start of the Ukraine war". His current book project is dedicated to the origins of the Bosnian war. Karčić has also developed great interest in the Drina River as a site of contested memory. The post-doc, who lived in Southeast Asia for nine years, is looking forward to his research stay in Regensburg: It’s his first time in Germany.
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Information/Contact
About Jeannette E. Jones, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
About Daniela Koleva, St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia, Bulgaria
About Katarina Damčević, University of Tartu, Estonia
About Hikmet Karčić, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina
Leibniz ScienceCampus „Europe and America in the Modern World“
REAF, Regensburg European American Forum
seeFField stands for A small but fertile field: strengthening Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, an Area Studies initiative that will run for seven years with the financial support of the Volkswagen Foundation, under the programme World Knowledge – Structural Support for ‘Rare Subjects’.
