Spokesperson of the Leibniz ScienceCampus

Ulf Brunnbauer
Director of IOS, Professor in Southeast and East European History

Ulf Brunnbauer has been Professor for the History of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg since 2008. He defended his Habilitation at Berlin Free University and gained his PhD from the University of Graz. He is Director ofthe Leibniz Institute for East and South-East European Studies (IOS) and Co-Director of the Graduate School for East and South-East European Studies. His research focuses on migration, social history, and nations and nationalism. He has been Spokesman of the Executive Board of the Center for International and Transnational Area Studies (CITAS) in Regensburg since January 2019.
 

Coordinators of the Research Modules & Trajectories

Anne Brüske
UR, Professor for Spatial Dimensions of Cultural Processes at DIMAS | ScienceCampus Board Member
Anne Brüske joined the Board of the ScienceCampus in October 2023. Her research and teaching focuses primarily on the borderlands and boundary areas of academic disciplines and cultural spaces. Her work spans cultural studies and sociology, addressing interdisciplinary questions relating to space as an aspect of cultural exchange and global dynamics.

Volker Depkat 
UR, Professor in American Studies, member of the board of REAF
Volker Depkat has been Professor of American Studies in Regensburg since 2005. He completed his Habilitation at the University of Greifswald and gained his PhD from the University of Göttingen. His research focus lies in US and North American history, including European-American connections. He is supervising two of the ScienceCampus doctoral researchers, Thalia Prokopiou and Jon Matlack.

Astrid Ensslin
UR, Professor of Virtual Communication Spaces at DIMAS
Before joining UR in 2002, she previously held full professorships at the University of Wales (Bangor), the University of Alberta (Canada) and the University of Bergen (Norway). Her research and teaching sit at the multiple intersections between digital media and game studies, cultural studies, literary studies, and applied linguistics. 

Arevik Gnutzmann-Mkrtchyan
IOS, Economics
Arevik Gnutzmann-Mkrtchyan is Academic Vice Director of IOS. Following PhD in Economics at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2014 with a thesis on the economics of trade agreements, shewas a postdoctoral researcher and then proferssor. She has served as an economic consultant/research associate for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, the World Trade Organization, and BEROC.

Guido Hausmann
IOS, East and Southeast European History
Guido Hausmann is the head of the history division at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and Professor of History of Southeast and Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg with a focus on Russia/the Soviet Union and Ukraine. He gained his PhD from the University of Cologne and defended his Habilitation at the University of Bielefeld. Since 2024, he has been co-speaker of the DAAD-funded Denkraum Ukraine Centre for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies at UR.

Birgit Hebel-Bauridl
University of Regensburg, Akademische Oberrätin, American Studies, Managing Director of the Regensburg European American Forum – REAF | ScienceCampus Board Member
Birgit Hebel-Bauridl (Akademische Oberrätin, American Studies, UR) is Managing Director of the Regensburg European American Forum (REAF). Her current project focuses on embodied memory and multiscalar European-American cultural negotiations at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum. Further research interests include multiscalar performance; critical regionalism; nationalsocialism and transgenerational trauma; resistant epistemologies and critical whiteness studies. She served on the CITAS Executive Board April 2019 until October 2022, when the Center was merged into DIMAS. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Sabine Koller
UR, Slavic-Jewish Studies
Sabine Koller has been Professor of Slavic-Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg since 2013. Her research interests include Slavic-Jewish and Yiddish literature, processes of cultural transfer and translation and the Eastern Jewish cultural renaissance.

Rike Krämer-Hoppe
UR, Professor of Public Law and Transregional Norm Development at DIMAS
Rike Krämer-Hoppe studied law in Groningen and Bremen, where she was awarded a doctorate. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at the  Jean Monnet Center, New York University, USA and a visiting scholar at the  Insper Institute in São Paulo in 2022 before joining UR. She has published extensively on climate change, the environment and law.

Jochen Mecke
UR, Romance Studies, Research Centre Spain
Jochen Mecke was Professor for Romance Philology at the University of Regensburg from 1996 until his retirement in 2023. He completed his Habilitation at the University of Heidelberg and his PhD at Mannheim. His research focuses on Spanish and French literature, film and culture. He was director of Forschungszentrum Spanien (Research Centre on Spain) in Regensburg and was speaker of the CITAS Executive Board until December 2018. He was a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Timothy Nunan
UR, Professor of Transregional Cultures of Knowledge at DIMAS
Timothy Nunan joined UR in 2022 from FU Berlin, where he was Head of the Volkswagen Freigeist Junior Research Group  on The Cold War's Clash of Civilizations at the Center for Global History. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard following a D.Phil at Oxford. He has pubilshed extensively on Cold War history, including studies on development in Afghanistan. His most recent book is Islamist Internationalism: Between the Cold War and Decolonization.

Olga Popova
IOS, Economics
Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Economics at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS, Regensburg). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI) and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (2012), a M.A. in Economics from CERGE-EI (2007), and a B.A. in Economic Theory from the Department of Economics, Ural State University, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2005). She was an external consultant for the World Bank and is a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. She is an Associate Editor of Comparative Southeast European Studies, the Journal of Population Economics, and the Journal of Happiness Studies. Her main research interests are environmental economics, quality of life, individual and regional inequalities, and economic and institutional development.

Dagmar Schmelzer
Associate Professor (Akad. Oberrätin) at the Institute of Romance Studies
Her research interests include connections between Québec and Europe in the realm of culture, politics and history, with a particular focus on film, literature and art.

Thomas Steger
UR, Business, Economics and Management Information Systems
Thomas Steger has held the Chair of Business Administration, specializing in Leadership and Organization, at the University of Regensburg since 2011. He completed his Habilitation and PhD at the Chemnitz University of Technology. His research interests include corporate governance and employee-owned companies.

Natali Stegmann
UR, East European Studies
Natali Stegmann has been the coordinator for research on Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg and a professor at the chair of Southeast and Eastern Europe since 2009. Her research interests include the history of East-Central Europe, International Organisations, late socialism and gender and cultural history.

Anna Steigemann
UR, Professor for Sociological Dimensions of Space at DIMAS
Her research includes a focus on urbanisation, urban and social transformation research (e. g. urban-rural relations, translocal practices, globalization, transformation towards sustainability) that applies actor- and practice-based approaches, critical participation and governance research in international comparison. She joined UR in 2020 as an acting professor, before joining the University full time, becoming the chairperson of DIMAS.

Tillmann Tegeler
IOS, Head of Library and Electronic Research Infrastructure Department
Tillmann Tegeler studied East and Southeast European History, Medieval History, and Slavic Studies in Munich and Moscow. In 2000, he graduated with an MA. In the same year, he started working at the library of the Institute for East European Studies (OEI) in Munich, and in 2004 also at the Institute for Southeast European Studies (SOI). With the relocation of the two institutes to Regensburg in 2007, he became head of the libraries. Since 2012, he has been head of the Library and Electronic Research Infrastructure Department.

Cindy Wittke 
IOS, Head of the Political Science Department and Professor of Normativity in International Politics at the Faculty of Law, UR| ScienceCampus Board Member
Cindy Wittke graduated in international law and leads the Political Science Department at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), where she is working on several projects, including an exploration of international law in the post-Soviet space. She received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin. She joined UR in April 2025, as a Professor of Normativity in International Politics at the Faculty of Law. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Early Career Researchers

Elia Bescotti
A new in-security architecture for Europe: postwar order and non-nuclear deterrence in Ukraine-Russia relations

Jon Matlack
Maneuvering towards ‘The West’: U.S. Army-Bundeswehr joint War Games as Conduit for Western Identity Formation

Elisa Mucciarelli
The Space of Abkhazia in Transnational Georgian Literature and the Visual Arts after 2008

Efthalia Prokopiou
Notions of Home in the Far Right “White Genocide” Narrative: A Multinational and Multilingual Approach to Contemporary Far Right Self-Representations in Europe and the Americas

Igor Stipić
The State and its Students: Hegemonic Structures, Subaltern Pedagogies, and Fractured Community in Bosnia and Chile

Vita Zelenska
What Does it Mean to Be a Refugee? Sites of Knowledge Production and Their Asymmetrical Entanglements

Further Participating Researchers

Volha Bartash
Postdoctoral Researcher in History/Anthropology at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (UR)
Volha Bartash is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Margins of Memory.

Marie Beyrich
UR, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Public Law and Politics

Klaus Buchenau
UR, Professor of the History Southeastern and Eastern Europe

Ger Duijzings
UR, Professor for Social Anthropology specializing in East and Southeast Europe
Ger Duijzings is supervisor of Igor Stipic and Vita Zelenska, two of the ScienceCampus doctoral researchers.

Heidrun Hamersky
UR, Managing Director of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (GS OSES)

Andreas Hilger
UR, Teaching and Research Assistant at the Chair of Business Administration

Tamara Heger
UR, Doctoral Researcher in American Studies and Administrative Manager of the Regensburg European-American Forum (REAF)

Ralf Junkerjürgen
UR, Professor for Romance Cultural Studies (French/Spanish)
Ralf Junkerjürgen is supervisor of Daniela Weinbach, a former ScienceCampus doctoral researcher, and director of the Spanish Research Centre (CEH), one of the ScienceCampus partner institutions.

Andrea Kaltenbrunner
UR, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Southeast and East European History

Tatiana Klepikova 
UR, Research Group Leader (Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Fellow) of the research group: “Light On! Queer Literatures and Cultures under Socialism," Institute for Slavic Studies
Tatiana Klepikova is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Margins of Memory.

Katharina Kucher
IOS, Research Associate and editor responsible for Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

Mirja Lecke
UR, Chair for Slavic Literature and Culture
Mirja Lecke is supervisor of Elisa Mucciarelli, a ScienceCampus predoctoral researcher.

Rainer Liedtke
UR, Chair of European History (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century)
Rainer Liedtke was first supervisor of Cornelius Merz, a former ScienceCampus doctoral researcher, and second supervisor to another ScienceCampus PhD student, Thalia Prokopiou.

Joanna Moszczyńska
UR, Department for Interdisciplinary and Multiscalar Area Studies (DIMAS)
Joanna Moszczyńska is a postdoctoral researcher at DIMAS, based with Anne Brüske, working on Latin American-East European connections. Having spent six months with Mecila in Sao Paolo, she joined UR with funding through the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme. 

Jacqueline Nießer
UR, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies

Edvin Pezo
IOS, Editor and Coordinator of the handbook project Handbook on the History of Southeast Europe

Hubert Pöppel
UR, Professor for Romance Literary Studies and Manager of the Spanish Research Centre (CEH)
His research interests include a focus on German-Spanish connections and Latin America, especially Colombia.

Silke Roesler-Keilholz
UR, Assistant Professor (Akad. Rätin) at the Institute of Information and Media, Language and Culture (I:IMSK)
Her research focuses on European-American connections in surveilliance cultures, while she also has an interest in film, fashion, urban studies and cyberspace.

Sabine Rutar
IOS, Senior Research Associate / Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor

Juliane Tomann
UR, Professor for Public History
Her research interests include performative practices in historical culture (doing history) including historical reenactment in the USA, Germany, and Poland.

Pia Wiegmink
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies; formerly at UR, Professor for American Studies (deputizing for Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel)

Mélanie Sadozaï
UR, Research Associate at the Department for Interdisciplinary and Multiscalar Area Studies (DIMAS)
Mélanie Sadozaï is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Borders.

Support Staff

Angelika Braun
University of Regensburg – administration of third-party funding

Gresa Morina
Assistant to the Manager of the ScienceCampus

Barbara Stupka-Pleban
IOS – Manager of Third-Party Funding and Research Projects

Paul Vickers
UR, Manager of the ScienceCampus

Former participating researchers and staff

Markus Diepold was a doctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg who received a Leibniz ScienceCampus writing up grant in early 2024 to work on his dissertation "The Material Culture of European-Indigenous Diplomacy in North America in the 18th Century"

Richard Frensch
IOS, Economics
Richard Frensch was head of the Department of Economics at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS). His research explores international trade, growth and convergence. He has worked for the United Nations and as an advisor for the governments of the Czech Republic and Ukraine. At the ScienceCampus, he was co-coorinator of the Research Module Trade and Institutions.

Gerlinde Groitl
UR, International Politics and Transatlantic Relations
Gerlinde Groitl is Professor of International Policy and Transatlantic Relations at the University of Regensburg where she also gained her PhD. She has also been a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Washington and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research focuses on US-European and US-German relations, exploring questions of interventionism, world orders and security policy.

Cornelius Merz
Former doctoral researcher working on "Exploring Identity and Belonging through Spatial Relations – a Comparative Study of Cleveland and Leipzig, 1890–1930"

Daniela Weinbach
Former doctoral researcher working on "Transnationale Film-Remakes: Zwischen Interkulturalität und universeller Verständlichkeit"

Fatima Khan
Student Assistant (SHK) at the ScienceCampus

Ioli Liedtke
Student Assistant (SHK) at the ScienceCampus

Simone Schneider
Student Research Assistant (WHK) at the ScienceCampus and student of the MA Programme in European-American Studies at UR

Cosimo Spangler
Student assistant (SHK) at the ScienceCampus; student of British Studies BA at UR.

Judith Steinmetz
Student Assistant (SHK) at the ScienceCampus, responsible for collaborating on the online lecture series European-American Entanglements with the vhb.