Scholarship Holders Introduce Themselves
Marco Schade, Paleontology, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2020
My doctorate focuses on dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era - or more precisely - their skulls. I am trying to gain insights from fossils using CT data. Last year, together with colleagues, I published the digital brain cast of a predatory dinosaur. Our work allows conclusions to be drawn about the particular anatomy and ecology of this predator, which lived in what is now Brazil about 115 million years ago.
Online lecture on the topic [de]
Victoria Rieckhoff, Criminology and Criminal Law, Bogislaw Scholarship April 2020 to January 2022
Since the summer of 2018, I have been doing my doctorate in the field of juvenile detention and, in this context, I am looking at the social environment and social relationships of young people in detention. Over a period of 17 months in total, I accompanied 17 young inmates on their way out of detention and into their lives after prison. The qualitative data I have obtained can be used, for example, to examine to what extent the social relationship structures of the young people have a positive and/or negative effect on their (legal) behaviour after release from prison.
Alice Cesbron, English and American Studies, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2020
Social media has indisputably become a place of debate and social change over the last few years when it comes to feminism and heteronormativity. Based on a corpus of Twitter and Instagram data in English, French and German, my research focuses on multimodal discourses about heterosexuality and more specifically on metadiscourses that provide commentary on internet content that displays stereotypical heterosexuality and/or heteronormativity. Using the tools of multimodal critical discourse analysis, such as revealing implicit ideologies at play and using visual analysis, the goal of my project is to look at how certain communities of social media users question and redefine heterosexuality and heteronormativity and how this can give us insight into current heterosexual norms and how the evolution of heteronormativity is perceived.
Sandra Markiewicz, German Philology, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2020
The doctoral project Talking Bodies, Talking Psyche. Narrative aus dem Erfahrungsspektrum von Gewalt und Trauma (“Talking Bodies, Talking Psyche. Narratives from Experience of Violence and Trauma”) (working title) is dedicated to the transdisciplinary embedding of trauma research in literary studies. On the basis of a close reading-analysis of three contemporary literary texts, current trauma narratives are elaborated in order to contribute to an emancipatory diversification of the texts and to extend the discourse in the field of literary studies with relevant insights from recent research, especially in psychology and cognitive science. The focus of the investigation is the narrative literarisation of the interplay between body/flesh and mind/psyche.
Lisann Schmidt, Economic and Social Geography, Bogislaw Scholarship April 2020 to September 2021
Globalisation causes an intensification of worldwide exchange processes between societies, countries and cities. Against this background, I am investigating the mobility of urban development policies in my doctoral project. The policy fields of "digitisation", "mobility" and "urban renewal" are the focus of attention. From a geographical perspective, I focus on the Baltic Sea region, which has a long tradition of economic, social and cultural relations.
By focussing on this region, my research project is closely linked to current key fields of research at the University of Greifswald. It benefits in particular from the Interdisciplinary Research Centre Baltic Sea Region (IFZO), where it makes a complementary contribution to the "Regional Development and Rural Areas" cluster.
Interdisciplinary Research Centre Baltic Sea Region (IFZO)
Robert Huber, Psychology, Bogislaw Scholarship since October 2020
In my doctoral project, I deal with different reactions to emotions shown by ingroup or outgroup people. Ingroup persons are persons who belong to my own social or cultural group, outgroup persons belong to another group.
There is a finding in academic literature that the same emotion (e.g. joy) elicits different responses depending on whether it is shown by ingroup or outgroup people. There are two competing approaches to explaining this finding, our work aims to test these contradictory approaches against each other and thus provide a basis for further research in this area.
David Walther, English and American Studies, scholarship from state funds since October 2020
The grotesque has always exhibited a transgressive nature in art and literature, whose ambivalence can both harden and break down traditional boundaries. My doctoral project is dedicated to the literary analysis of the grotesque in Salman Rushdie's Œuvre in order to show how the grotesque interface in his work questions and connects discourses of power, gender, ecology and postcolonialism.
The framework for this analysis is provided by a synthesis of the grotesque and Foucault's understanding of power. Various other discourses are then grafted onto this grotesque power matrix. In doing so, I draw on thinkers such as Julia Kristeva, Mary Russo and Homi K. Bhabha to provide a detailed examination of the many grotesque instances in Rushdie's work and their use to contextualise the most important issues of our time.
Dustin Matthes, German Philology, Bogislaw Scholarship since October 2020
My doctoral project is about contemporary literature and computer games. But instead of addressing the question often asked in the past as to whether and how computer games can be "read", I would like to turn the perspective around. Drawing on reflections from the field of game studies and cyberfeminism, I look at selected texts of contemporary literature and examine how they are shaped by computer games, both thematically and structurally. The question of how computer games change when they are processed in literary terms also plays a role in the work, since in the sense of a broad concept of text, oriented towards theories of intertextuality, the boundaries between the two media are perceived as fluid.
Marlene Mühlmann, Psychology, scholarship from state funds since April 2021
In Germany, sexual health is promoted through sex education in schools. The parental home also plays a decisive role when issues such as sexuality and relationships become relevant for young people. Especially now - in times of home schooling and school closures - it is important to support parents with their role in sex education. For this purpose, as part of my research I am developing and evaluating an online-based programme for parents of adolescents.
Johannes Sange, Art History, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2021
The subject of my doctorate is the Mecklenburg court painter Georg David Matthieu. In addition to his hitherto sparsely researched life and artistic environment, I am concentrating mainly on his work in the field of rococo portrait painting. I will bring light to the cultural function and aesthetic effects of his portraits. Here, the focus will be placed in particular on an illusionistic portrait type used by Matthieu, which is unique to Germany. From this perspective, one can deduce a localisation of his portrait painting in the court portrait art of the 18th century and produce further evidence of international cultural interweaving in the history of Mecklenburg.
Fabian Winter, Pharmacy, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2021
Clinical trials on humans are unavoidable in pharmaceutical research. However, it is not only the duty and goal of all pharmaceutical entrepreneurs to make these studies as safe as possible for the subjects, but also to reduce these studies to a minimum. For some years now, physiology-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modelling has offered one way of achieving this. In this process, a computer simulates the human body’s reaction to the dosage form and drug.
In my doctoral thesis, I am investigating new ways of integrating the large amount of data from laboratory studies into such simulations in order to better predict both the effect and possible side effects of drugs without having to test them on humans. I focus in particular on the physiological influences on the dosage form during gastrointestinal passage.
Working Group Biopharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology [de]
Geogina Gumindega, Landscape Ecology, Bogislaw Fellowship since April 2021
Overexploitation and land use change in the past few decades have resulted in the severe degradation of Indonesia’s peatlands. Drained peatlands are susceptible to fire and this has caused the increase and intensity of peatland fires. As result, the Southeast Asia region has battled a regional air pollution problem compounded by serious health concerns. My study investigates the long-term health effects of poor air quality in Indonesian communities that have been repeatedly affected by peatland fires and exposed to haze over a long period. Through interview-based data, the study assesses the prevalence of known chronic respiratory diseases. Furthermore, the study will zoom in on the severity of COVID-19 as a case study. The study is a cooperation between the Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology and the Institute for Community Medicine. I am conducting this research in collaboration with the Greifswald Mire Centre and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Indonesia.
Thomas McLaren, Psychology, scholarship from state funds since October 2021
Why do some people with depressive symptoms seek professional help, while others do not? What role does stigma towards people with a mental disorder play in this? Do people of German background with higher education and more income receive preferential treatment in the health system - is it due to a lack of health education of social minorities or are the reasons for the inequality in terms of healthcare more complex?
I will address these questions in the course of my doctorate. For this purpose, I will compose a construct of "self-milieus", which includes influences of the social milieu concept (cf. Bourdieu, Hradil) as well as self-construction theory (cf. Kitayama and Markus). With the help of this, I will analyse whether and to what extent the process of seeking help differs depending on the milieu.
Dennis Wilk, Medical Physics, scholarship from state funds since October 2021
In the past decades, hardly any scientific discipline has achieved such rapid development as brain research. The breakthroughs associated with this field rely on the technical progress of medical imaging techniques, especially MRI. Despite intensive research, however, the human brain poses many unanswered questions regarding its functioning and pathologies. On the one hand, there are neurological diseases associated with the ageing world population, on the other hand there are some that affect infants and young children. Due to the high mortality rate, they are at the focus of current research.
In my doctoral thesis, I am working on velocity encoding and visualisation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the human brain with 4D flow MRI. I would like to contribute to the understanding of the brain to enable development of new diagnostic tests and treatment or the optimisation of existing ones.
Emily Röger, Economics & Management, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2022
My doctoral project focuses on services marketing. Primarily, I deal with the two theories guiding the research, the reactance theory and the Veblen effect.
"The theory of psychological reactance" by Jack W. Brehm (1966) with its reactance effects is a theory of motivation in the perceived restriction of freedom. Products with a perceived scarcity often appear more desirable to consumers - or to put it another way: the scarcer a good is, the higher it is valued.
"The Theory of the Leisure Class" by Thorstein Veblen (1899) - better known as the Veblen effect - is an anomaly effect of price elasticity. This means that for certain goods, a rising price triggers an abnormal increase in demand.
Both marketing theories have been shown to occur with material goods. However, it is unclear whether this is also the case for intangible goods. In my thesis, I want to investigate both phenomena by looking at tourist destinations and travel.
Chair of General Business Administration and International Financial Markets and Management [de]
Tjorven Carstens, English and American Studies, Bogislaw Scholarship since April 2022
Power is one of the central concepts of human interaction that can manifest itself in many different ways. If not genetically, then at least cognitively human-like characters populate the narrative worlds of contemporary fantasy literature, but these narrative worlds differ fundamentally in their laws and elements from the real world in which human action and thus the exercise of power normally take place.
The question I am addressing in my thesis project, therefore, is how this genre-typical impossibility of the narrative worlds of fantasy literature affects three kinds of power relationships: those between the characters who inhabit the narrative worlds; those between the characters and the author who conceives the world and characters; and those between the author and readers who knowingly engage in something that could never take place in their own world.
To answer this question, I combine the disciplines of literary studies, Alfred Adler's individual psychology, and the philosophical reflections of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault.