Link: Project website

Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Academic Assemblages in the Qualitative Social Sciences and Humanities. This project explores the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI's GPT models, within the qualitative social sciences and humanities at the University of Tübingen. From an ethnographic perspective, it seeks to understand how students and academic staff are becoming early adopters of generative AI, how this technology is being integrated into hybrid epistemic practices, and its broader impact in academic assemblages. The ultimate goal is to lay a foundation for the development of critical AI literacy in order to help students, researchers, and academic stakeholders make more informed decisions in the context of generative AI.

Link: Project website

An Interdisciplinary Study of Adaptation, Resilience, and Sustainability. Islands are among the last places on Earth to have been settled by humans and the most impacted by the current environmental crisis. With over 20% of UNESCO world heritage sites, islands represent some of the planet’s most diverse natural and cultural spots. Islands thus represent outstanding showcases for exploring cultural, climatic, and environmental transformations. Their spatial characteristics and variability make them highly suitable for the study of human adaptation, resilience, and sustainability, and to explore what broader lessons can be learnt from the study of islands. The dynamics of environment-society interactions in island communities will be investigated for the first time on a global level within an interdisciplinary and diachronic comparative framework. We study how island societies have adapted to environmental change, and the resulting challenges. Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Pacific islands are analysed from the first human settlements to the beginning of industrialisation.

In the Context of Democratic and Authoritarian States: A Case Study of China and Taiwan. The project aims to address the complexities of the intimacy-mobility-state nexus that have not received appropriate academic and public attention, especially in East Asia. By examining contentious issues in contemporary societies of China and Taiwan, such as digital relationships, accessing reproductive rights, relying on migrants for the care of elders or children, informal networks of migrant workers, moving for children’s education or adopting alternative education practices as a consequence of migration, this project aims to show how intimacy and mobility shape and reshape each other in two unique socio-political contexts, i.e., authoritarian neoliberalism (China) and developmental state (Taiwan) respectively.