Junior Research Groups

Junior research group: Cultural History of Water in Central Asia

Across the world, there are enormous inequalities in people’s access to sweet water, with climate change likely to further exacerbate the situation. As a group of anthropologists and archaeologists, we set out to trace people’s changing attitudes to water in Central Asia. We pursue historically-informed research on moral economies of water in a landlocked region where most agriculture depends on irrigation. We ask in what contexts water in Central Asia was and is treated as sacred, as a public or private resource (in various formats) or used to produce other resources such as electricity and cotton.

Junior research group: Coupled Hybrid Nanostructures

We combine inorganic semiconductor nanoparticles with organic semiconductors for application in optoelectronic devices. By precise tuning of the energy levels in a given material combination, conductive channels emerge which specifically filter charge carriers and lead to novel electronic properties. We exploit this concept for the fabrication of field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors and solar cells.