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KKC-PROGRAMM WINTERSEMESTER 2023/2024

Wir freuen uns auf ein spannendes Semester mit Ihnen!
Eine Übersicht des Programms finden Sie hier!

Call for participation: Lake Como School of Advanced Studies

The Summer School in Social Sciences is offering the event "Life-chances in the Digitalized Society: structural transformations and socio-cultural adjustments" from June 17 -21 2024, at Villa del Grumello in Como:

    "The planetary diffusion of digital telecommunication over the last two decades has become an integral component of global markets, nation states, corporations, and the individual lives of billions of people. It consists of three layers, each of which are unevenly distributed between East and West, North and South (Ali, 2021; Duarte, 2017; Randell-Moon and Hynes, 2022). First is the infrastructural layer consisting of submarine fiber optics, low-orbit satellites, and data centers that sustains the production, circulation and valorization of data. Second is the layer of interfaces such as mobile devices, smartphones, drones, automated cars, robots, and computers, upon which a third layer of software applications and digital platforms plays a key intermediating role in work, leisure and social cooperation, functioning as an automated system for the extraction, accumulation and elaboration of personal information.

    These three socio-technical layers make up the “digital society” and are having a profound impact on social dynamics in politics, law, healthcare, welfare, culture, religion, and education. But their socio-political effects are uneven, reflecting extant power relationships. This is particularly so concerning generative artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms, evident in cases like “The Gospel”, an AI platform used by the Israeli Defense Force to bomb the Gaza Strip, and the European Union’s pledge to develop the world’s first AI legislation that could exclude migrants from legal protection of experimental surveillance, data extraction, etc.

    The winners and losers of the digital revolution are an important topic of discussion. The social sciences can offer crucial insights into understanding how the “digital society” intersects with power, authority, and human rights beyond moral assumptions or technological determinism. The focus of this school is on life chances in the context of an advanced digitalized capitalism. Are we witnessing structural transformations that affect social inequalities and impact social mobility? What kind of socio-cultural adjustments counteract or balance these major issues? When addressing these questions, it is important to keep in mind three caveats. Firstly, healthcare, science, justice, war, or education – all these areas of human life were always been mediated by technology (Hui, 2021) long before the first internet network. Secondly, it is useful to be aware that since the political and cultural debate is being increasingly driven by technological and digital solutionism, one of the challenges for the social sciences is to avoid the trap of "digital exceptionalism”. And thirdly, while tech giants try to hide their political responsibility and economic exploitation by pushing public opinion to moral and deterministic assumptions over AI and automated technology, the social sciences must go beyond the commercialization of socio-technical imaginaries based on the digital and technological sublime (Mosco, 2014; Kim & Jasanoff, 2015), enabling urgent investigations on the genealogy and geography of unnoticed new powers, injustices, forms of exploitation, and social responsibilities."

Click here for the announcement posters.
Detailed information about the course and application can be found here.

Cooperation between the KKC and the School of Liberal Studies (BML Munjal University/Gurugram)

We are happy to announce that the cooperation between the Kilian-Köhler-Centre (KKC) at the Ruhr-University Bochum and the School of Liberal Studies (BML Munjal University/Gurugram) has successfully started. Major elements of this cooperation include an exchange program, which started in February 2024, and is currently being hosted by the SoLS, as well as an online-lecture series introducing the work done by scholars of both institutions. The program is organized by Dr. Arindam Banerjee (Dean SoLS/BMU), Dr. Pradeep Chakkarath (Co-Director KKC) and Dr. Anup Dhar (Distinguished Visiting Professor SoLS/BMU; Former Fellow KKC).

In this first exchange of a still evolving cooperation, Sebastian Salzmann and Bent Schiemann visit the SoLS/BMU, funded and supported by both organizations. Sebastian Salzmann, PhD candidate at the Chair of Social Theory and Social Psychology (RUB), uses this research stay to work on his project, which looks into discourses of cultural decline as transnational phenomena through the lenses of sociology of knowledge and cultural psychology. Bent Schiemann, who is studying for his Master's degree in social science with a specialization in cultural psychology, engages with the work and heritage of Sudhir Kakar as part of his internship.

Later this year the exchange program will continue with Nazia Amin (Assistant Professor/BMU), whose research is centered around the question of freedom, residence and community in Kashmir, visiting the KKC in Bochum. 

New Publication by Sudhir Kakar

In 2022, the KKC and the Sigmund Freud Institute (SFI) in Frankfurt awarded the "Lotte Köhler Prize for Psychoanalytic Developmental, Cultural and Social Psychology" for the first time. The first prize winner is the prominent Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar who visited the KKC twice in 2023. The book he wrote on the occasion of the prize has just been published: "The Indian jungle - Psychoanalysis and non-Western civilizations".

Lotte-Köhler-Preis 2023

Zum zweiten Mal hat das Kilian-Köhler-Centrum (KKC) in Kooperation mit dem Sigmund-Freud-Institut (SFI) in Frankfurt den "Lotte-Köhler Preis für psychoanalytische Entwicklungs-, Kultur- und Sozialpsychologie" vergeben. Vergeben wird der Preis in einer Hauptkategorie zur Würdigung eines Lebenswerks sowie einer Nachwuchskategorie zur Förderung vielversprechender wissenschaftlicher Talente.

Den Preis in der Hauptkategorie ging an:
Prof. Dr. Amy Allen (Pennsylvania State University) aus den USA

Den Preis in der Nachwuchskategorie erhielt:
Dr. Yuri di Liberto (Absolvent der Universität Palermo)

IPU-KKC-Fellow Dr. Ayçe Feride Yılmaz

Ab Oktober 2023 ist Dr. Ayçe Feride Yılmaz die neue IPU-KKC-Fellow für Sozialpsychologie, Kulturpsychologie und Psychoanalyse. Das Postdoc-Fellowship wird vom KKC in Kooperation mit der Psychoanalytic University (IPU) in Berlin seit 2020 vergeben. Die erste Hälfte des 12-monatigen Fellowships wird Dr. Yılmaz ab Oktober 2023 am KKC in Bochum verbringen; die zweite Hälfte ab April 2024 an der IPU in Berlin. Ihr Forschungsinteresse gilt in besonderem Maße feministischen Theorien, narrativer Psychologie und diskurstheoretischen Analysen. Ihre jüngste Monographie erschien 2020 im Verlag Libra Kitap unter dem Titel "A Mouthpiece for the Ottoman Empire: The Balkan Gazette in Bulgaria, 1910-1911". - Das KKC und der Lehrstuhl für Sozialtheorie und Sozialpsychologie freuen sich, Dr. Yılmaz bei uns begrüßen und sich mit ihr austauschen zu können.