About us

Paul R. Schreiber's research can be located in the field of reflexive sociology of migration with a focus on social (dis)integration, social inequality and recognition. His research has dealt extensively with the Berlin Senate Administration's concept of integration and its dialectics from a recognition theory perspective, drawing on disintegration approaches and debates on postmigrant society. In January 2023, he started his PhD project at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum within the framework of the graduate program of the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin (IPU) and the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center (KKC). The project will focus on fantasies and imaginaries of integration and (non)-belonging in post-migrant society.

Anno Dederichs is a sociologist and sinologist currently working as a postdoc at the China Centrum Tübingen. His research interests focus on cultural differentiation in Sino-German relations and mutual conception of the other.

Sander Diederich is a sociologist enrolled in the master's program Diversity and Society at the University of Tübingen. Their work has centered around the moral dimensions of (transitional) justice, anti-Asian racism, and the interactional discrimination of transgender persons. Their interests range from feminist epistemologies to utopian perspectives and the normative aspects of (academic) scholarship.

Currently, they are exploring notions of 'the good life', with a specific focus on understanding the construction and effect of commonalities/differences using lenses such as communitarianism, solidarity, diversity, and belonging.

Manuel Dieterich's research focus is on questions relating to migration, morality and urban coexistence. He is currently working on an ethnography on this research complex in Johannesburg.

Boris Nieswand is an ethnographer interested in social theory, reflexive migration and diversity studies, social inequality, threat and morality.

Claire Bullen is an anthropologist working as a postdoc at the Institute for Sociology. Her research interests include transforming socio-spatial relations in cities, questions of power, anthropology of the Mediterranean and ethnographic comparison. She has worked in Algeria, France and the UK, and her current project involves an ethnographic study of multi-scalar social networks intersecting a street in Marseille.

Damián Omar Mártinez is an urban ethnographer. His interests range from urban and migration studies to the history, epistemology and sociology of the social sciences. His research topics include the normative dimension of everyday life, diversity, inequality (and the search for equality), solidarity, poverty (and the efforts to fight against it), community activism, and urban problematization.

Dr. Bani Gill is a Junior Professor at the Institute for Sociology, University of Tübingen. She is a qualitative sociologist grounded in ethnographic sensibilities and a regional focus on South Asia and contemporary Africa- India encounters. As chairholder for ‘Urban Futures in the Global South’, her research interests include urbanism, migration, race and racialization, gender, and the sociology of law, bureaucracy, and the state. Her scholarship has examined contemporary patterns of transnational mobility from the African continent, particularly West Africa, to Delhi, India, as an entry point to engage with questions of social difference and identity in relation to urban futures. Her upcoming project examines migrant deportation, infrastructures, and policing by attending to the complex relationship between urban space, identity and identification for different subject populations located in Delhi. Dr. Gill received her PhD from the University of Copenhagen. She is also a Research Affiliate at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society, University of Oxford.

Judith Riepe is a doctoral student and faculty member at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Tübingen. She is interested in the anthropology of development, migration, the state and law as well as gender studies, applied anthropology and research ethics. Her current research is on truth and credibility assessments in the asylum process in Germany.

Marie Graef is a doctoral student at the Department of Sociology of Technology, Risk and Environment at the University of Stuttgart. She is part of an interdisciplinary graduate school on socio-ecological transformation processes in medium-sized cities and is especially interested in the role of local administrations.

Polina Manolova is a sociologist currently working on a postdoc project related to EU citizens’ pathways of incorporation in Germany. She is interested in questions of intra-EU migration, internal border regimes, migrant imaginaries and strategies, and the analysis of postsocialism via post- and decolonial theory. She currently coordinates the UnKUT network.

Carlos Nazario Mora Duro holds a PhD in Social Sciences from El Colegio de México (El Colmex). Between 2018 and 2021, he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, conducting a project on the migration experience of Mexicans in the city of Berlin. Afterwards, he was a research associate at The Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences: “Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” at the University of Leipzig. Currently, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Tübingen, within the Global Encounters Platform. His recent study analyses the incorporation of migrants in the post-pandemic period, focusing on recent Mexican migration to Germany. Member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico, level 1. He is also part of the International Graduate Program “Between Spaces” of the University of Berlin, of the International Research Network for the Study of Science & Belief in Society, and of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.

Ursina Jaeger’s research interest include the anthropology of childhood, migration and schooling, and politics of belonging. Her current project (thesis) ‘Everyday Multireferentiality’ is an ethnography of a kindergarten class in a diversified neighborhood at the outskirt of Zurich.

Yewon Andrea Lee is a Junior Professor at the Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen. As a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer, Yewon is broadly interested in how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shape and character of urban landscapes and urban lives. Currently, Yewon is preparing a monograph that examines a fascinating case in which tenant shopkeepers in South Korea are challenging the formidable power of property-ownership-based citizenship. The activism of tenant shopkeepers in Korea against eviction from their shops is debunking the idea that these so-called micro-entrepreneurs or petit bourgeoisie are either shielded from capitalist exploitation or destined to be unrevolutionary and individualistic. Yewon’s ethnographic work on tenant shopkeepers’ activism both reveals the urban inequalities that are driven by rentier capitalism and analyzes the on-the-ground efforts to counter them.

Former members

Michael Hutzler has done research on gender critique at a queer feminist festival. His theoretical interests include the sociology of critique, actor-network-theory and ethnomethodology.

Ferdinand Nyberg’s research interests include cultural and intellectual history, global history, spatial theory, and histories of alcohol and drugs.

Elisa Tamburo came to Tübingen as a Resident Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan and as a Teach at Tübingen Fellow in the department of Ethnology. She recently handed in her PhD dissertation on the politics of urban relocation of a military settlement to high rise buildings in Taipei. Some of her interests include the study of urban displacement and migration, critical theory, and the anthropology of infrastructure. Her area of expertise is on the Greater China region and on the Chinese diaspora elsewhere.

Jan Hinrichsen is an undisciplined anthropologist, working as a post-doc at the Department for Historical and Cultural Anthropology. Interested in the anthropology of knowledge and science, critical theory and practices of critique, his current research focuses on the vulnerability of humans, animals, and infrastructures, as well as the regimes and practices of a "good life".

Yu-chin Tseng's research interests lie in the area of migration, global mobility, gender and intimacy, citizenship studies and Asian politics. Her recent research has centered on issues of the double-commodification of intra-Asia student-migrants and Chinese entrepreneurs in Europe in times of economic crisis.