Guests & Academics

The Opening Week is an opportunity to get into conversation with renowned guests and academics. All the impulses and talks revolve around a major theme: COLLECTING. We explore the various dimensions of collecting and focus on: Art & Archives, Data & Values, Power & Rights, Nature & Resources, Trust & Recognition.

The Opening Week will be guided by exciting guests, who we would like to introduce to you in the following.

Hosts

This year's hosts are vegetation ecologist Sylvia Haider, art historian Lynn Rother, social pedagogue Philipp Sandermann, legal scholar Valentin Schatz and professor for business administration Hannah Trittin. The professors lay the first tracks for the study programme and moderate the focus interviews on the stage of the Libeskind Auditorium.

     

Sylvia Haider

Sylvia Haider ©Leuphana
Sylvia Haider is Professor of Vegetation Ecology and Biodiversity Research at the Institute of Ecology of the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity as a basis for its sustainable use, with a focus on ecosystem functioning and the impacts of climate change.

   

Lynn Rother

Portrait Lynn Rother ©BRINKHOFF-MOEGENBURG
Lynn Rother is art historian. She is a Specialist in the field of Provenance Research and since 2019 Lichtenberg Professor for Provenance Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She understands provenance research under a broad objective and with a corresponding interdisciplinary approach. In addition to the particularly important restitution of looted art or the identification of art forgeries, provenance research in Rother's understanding can be fruitful for many historical, sociological, or political questions.

  

Philipp Sandermann

Portrait Philipp Sandermann ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Philipp Sandermann is Professor of Social Pedagogy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. His research includes: (Comparative) welfare systems, theories of social pedagogy and social work, child and youth welfare research, refugee family research, trust research.

  

Valentin Schatz

Portrait Valentin Schatz ©Leuphana | Marie Meyer
Valentin Schatz holds the junior professorship for Public Law and European Law with a focus on sustainability. The junior professorship is located at the Institute for Sustainability Governance of the Faculty of Sustainability (INSUGO). His research focuses on European, international and national public sustainability law, environmental law and maritime law, with the "Blue Economy" being a particular area of interest.

  

Hannah Trittin

Trittin, Hannah ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Hannah Trittin is Professor of Business Administration, in particular Companies in Society at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. She conducts research on corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability or CSR communication, corporate digital responsibility (CDR), new forms of work and organizing, and the role of individual agents of sustainability, change agents for sustainability.

  

Guests

We are especially pleased to welcome the following renowned personalities to this year's Opening Week. As experts in their respective fields, they will show you new perspectives in keynote speeches and panels and further illuminate the topic of COLLECTING.

   

Barbara Plankensteiner

Portrait Barbara Plankensteiner ©Paul Schimweg
Barbara Plankensteiner is an ethnologist and museum director. After her work at the World Museum in Vienna and at the Yale University Art Gallery, she was appointed Scientific Director of the Museum am Rothenbaum - Cultures and Arts of the World (MARKK) in Hamburg in April 2017. As spokesperson for the Benin Dialogue Group, she coordinated the returns of Benin Bronzes from German museums in 2021.

     

Reinhard Bachmann

Portrai Reinhard Bachmann ©Reinhard Bachmann
Reinhard Bachmann is social scientist who teaches and researches at SOAS University of London. He is Professor of International Management; and the Founder and Director of the Centre for Trust Research at SOAS. He is one of the pioneers of trust research in the field of management theory. His research focuses on issues of Stratetegic Management, Organizational Analysis and Comparative Management.

     

Claudia Emmert

Porträt von Claudia Emmert ©Paul Tittel
Claudia Emmert is a German art historian and curator. Since October 2014 she has been director and managing director of the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. Before she was head of the Kunstpalais in Erlangen.

   

ensemble reflektor

Ensemble Reflector ©Sophia Hegewald
The young chamber orchestra "ensemble reflektor" sees itself as an ambassador for a music culture without borders. It questions the traditions of the concert business, reinterprets and reorders them. In doing so, the musicians jointly develop concert programmes in which the different works combine and illuminate each other beyond their genre.

   

Sabine Fischer

Portrait Sabine Fischer ©Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
Sabine Fischer is a researcher at the German Institute for International Politics and Security. Her main areas of expertise include Russian diplomacy and security policy as well as EU-Russia relations.

     

Martin Hartmann

Portrait Martin Hartmann ©©Flurin Bertschinger, all rights reserved
Martin Hartmann is a German philosopher and professor of philosophy with a focus on practical philosophy at the University of Lucerne.

   

Özge Inan

Portrait Özge Inan ©Leonardo Kahn
Özge Inan is author and columnist from Berlin, where she studied law. She worked for ZDF Magazin Royal and the investigative department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Her main topics are legal policy, distribution issues, gender justice and the politics in Turkey.

     

Claudia Kalisch

Portraitfoto von Claudia Kalisch ©Claudia Kalisch
Head Mayor Claudia Kalisch is the highest political representative and head of the administration of the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg.

   

Maike Scholz

Portrait Maike Scholz ©Deutsche Telekom AG/Norbert Ittermann
Maike Scholz is Senior Expert in Group Compliance at Telekom's headquarters in Bonn. She is Squadlead for digital Ethics and has been involved in developing the guidelines for AI at Telekom since 2017.

     

Maximilian Steinbeis

Portrait Maximilian Steinbeiß ©Maximilian Steinbeiß
Maximilian Steinbeis is a legal journalist and writer and the founder and chief editor of Verfassungsblog.

    

Franziska Tanneberger

Portrait Franziska Tanneberger ©Marlene Pfau 2021
Franziska Tanneberger is a scientist and director of the Greifswald Moor Centrum (GMC). The GMC is an interface between science, policy and practice for all peatland-related issues - local and global. Franziska Tanneberger works in various research projects at the Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology at the University of Greifswald. Her research focuses on fens in Central and Eastern Europe and Siberia, especially breeding birds, peat formation and effects of agricultural use. She is also active as a volunteer in various environmental and nature conservation initiatives as well as part of the project management of toMOORow, a cooperation project of the Michael Otto Environmental Foundation.

   

Johannes Vogel

Portrait Johannes Vogel ©Hwa Ja Götz, MfN
Johannes Vogel is Head of the Museum of Natural History Berlin and Professor of Biodiversity and Public Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin

    

Academics

The Academics advise the project groups on content: they provide a first orientation in the project topic, clarify questions of understanding and introduce critical and visionary perspectives. 31 professors, research assistants and lecturers from all over the university support you in your first project studies.

  

David Abson

Portrait Dave Abson ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Dave Abson is professor for Sustainable Resource Use in the Social-ecological Systems Institute (SESI) within the Faculty of Sustainability. His background is a mixture of ecological economics, landscape ecology and sustainability science, with a particular interest in the justice components of sustainability in relation to natural resource usage and the problems associated with, and alternatives to the current economic growth paradigm. His work encompasses both placed based social-ecological research and global modelling of resource flows.

  

Lars Alberth

Lars Alberth ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Lars Alberth is professor for theory and methods of childhood studies. His research comprises sociology of childhood, child victimization and generational order, professions and organizations in child protection, sociology of bodies, space and emotions from an interactionist perspective.

    

Simone Borgstede

Simone Borgstede ©Simone Borgstede
Simone Beate Borgstede, Ph.D. came to academic life through social and still lives in houses which were squatted in the eighties. She is a sociologist and historian especially interested in questions like how to fight racism and sexism and develop solidarity and is teaching in these fields at different universities since 20 years. She is active in two groups with refugee women and in her direct neighbourhood against racist profiling.

   

Stefanos Dimitriadis

Portrait Stefanos Dimitriardis ©Leuphana
Stefanos Dimitriadis is a lecturer at Leuphana for Business Process Management and Digital Business. After studying computer science, he worked for many years as a consultant for well-known companies. Since completing the MBA Sustainament, he has been interested in the sustainable use of IT technologies especially in the field of digital marketing.

   

Heike Düselder

Portrait Heike Düselder ©Unbekannt
Historian Heike Düselder has been the director of the Museum Lüneburg since 2012. She is an honorary professor of history at the University of Osnabrück. For her, the interdisciplinary Museum Lüneburg is a place of learning and education, but also a place of encounter and discourse. Current topics belong in the museum just as much as history.

   

Liselotte Hermes da Fonseca

Liselotte Hermes da Foncesca ©Liselotte Hermes da Foncesca
Liselotte Hermes da Fonseca studied German language and literature, ethnology, scandinavian studies, philosophy and art history in Hamburg, Rome and Bologna. She wrote her dissertation in ethnology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg on the topic "Questions about Life: Representations of the Knowledge of Man". She is an editor and author in the field of literature, ethnology, cultural studies, modern art and psychology, translator (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, English) and lecturer at the University of Bremen, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Halle, Paderborn, Stendal-Magdeburg and Lüneburg.

    

Lea Gathen

Portrait Lea Gathen ©Lea Gathen
Lea Gathen is a young educational professional focussing on teaching and small research projects connected to energy and mobility of the future. She holds a degree each in environmental and educational science.

   

Cornelius Gesing

Portrait Cornelius Gesing ©1 enUS(Public Domain)
Cornelius Gesing is a creative and communications generalist and works as a concept developer, editor and moderator. He is passionate about topics such as democratic participation, current politics and GEN Z and enjoys discussing them in various formats with personalities from politics, culture and the public.

     

Stefanie Habersang

Portrait Stefanie Habersang ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Stefanie Habersang is a Junior Professor of Business Administration, in particular Digital Transformation. Her research interests resolve around organizational change, digital-ecological transformation processes and the control of algorithms in the platform economy. In addition, Stefanie is also interested in new methodological avenues in qualitative research.

   

Maren Haffke

Portrait Maren Haffke ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Maren Haffke is a media scholar and musicologist and holds the position of Juniorprofessor for Sound Studies at Leuphana. Her dissertation „Archäologie der Tastatur. Musikalische Medien nach Friedrich Kittler und Wolfgang Scherer“ was published by Fink Verlag in 2019. Current research interests include the media history of acoustic ecologies, the history of digital sound media, and media of sonic care. Maren Haffke is a member of the editorial board of Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft and a member of the board of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft.

     

Harald Hantke

Portrait Harald Hantke ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Harald Hantke is Junior Professor for Social Science Education, in particular Economic Didactics at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. The core of his work is to take an inter- and transdisciplinary look at the structures and conditions of economic didactics as well as vocational and business education in the context of social, economic and technological transformation processes. Against this background, the focal points of his work include for example sustainability in the context of education processes, curricular development as part of school development, professionalization of educational staff and dealing with uncertainties, ambiguities and contradictions.

   

Raphael Haus

Portrait Raphael Haus ©Raphael Haus
Raphael Haus is mechanical engineer and industrial designer. Over a period of 5 years, he was the managing director of a VR company. Most recently, he was employed by Fab City Hamburg and works on digital infrastructure development for the Global Network of Fab Cities. He is currently dedicated to founding a makerspace in Lüneburg, where he lives with his family.

   

Lukas Hogenschurz

Portrait Lukas Hogenschurz ©Anna Lorscheider, CSM
Lukas Hogenschurz earned his bachelor's degree in business and a master's degree in sustainability science at Leuphana University. After his studies, he worked in an international consultancy where his work focused on circular economy strategy development and implementation. In 2023, he joined the Centre for Sustainability Management at Leuphana University, where he researches circular economy measurement and transformations for businesses.

   

Maik Jachens

Portrait Maik Jachens ©Landesmuseum Hannover
Maik Jachens studied history and political science in Hamburg and Stellenbosch, South Africa and worked for the Goethe-Institut in Hamburg. Since 2019 he is employed as provenance researcher at the Lower Saxony State Museum Hannover where he focusses mainly on research regarding collections from colonial contexts, especially on the African collections.

   

Melanie Janßen-Kim

Portrait Melanie Janßen-Kim ©D V
Melanie Janßen-Kim studied prehistoric archaeology as well as Asian studies in Bonn and Seoul. Her research focus is on the development and transmission of innovations and ideas during the Bronze Age in Europe and East Asia.

   

Johannes Katsarov

Portrait Johannes Karsarov ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Johannes Katsarov is Research Associate at the Institute for Management and Organization Project of Leuphana University and has specialized in ethical responsibilities - with a special focus on the use of game-based learning. Currently, he is developing serious games and teaching modules on the responsible use of artificial intelligence and social media in business. He advises the group of Playful Learning of Artificial Intelligence Ethics

   

Olga Kytidou

Portrait Olga Kytidou ©Studioline Neu Isenburg
Olga Kytidou completed her doctoral thesis on a comparative media discourse on foreigner crime in Greek and German newspapers with a scholarship from the Hans-Böckler-Foundation. She studied International Relations and European Studies in Greece with a state scholarship. Her main research and teaching interests are migration, social sustainability, EU and international organisations, political education, NGOs, and media. Her work and studies are multilingual, interdisciplinary and often comparative.

   

Ilsemagret Luttmann

Portrait Ilsemargret Luttmann ©Ilsemargret Luttmann
Ilsemargret Luttmann is a long-term lecturer at the Leuphana University whose research interests and fields of teaching are geographically focused on the African continent dealing mostly with socio-cultural developments as well as theoretical and methodological approaches to transcultural/intercultural topics. She works on the basis of multi-disciplinary perspectives which include the use of not-text-based media such as films, literature and art in general. Her academic career goes hand in hand with year-long working experiences - as a consultant, teacher, lecturer, tourist guide - in different west-African countries. As an artist she integrates theoretical und lived knowledge about Africa into her paintings.

   

Sandra Neugärtner

Portrait Sandra Neugärtner ©MARKO BUSSMANN
Sandra Neugärtner is a Research Assistant at the Chair of Art History of the Institute of Philosophy and Art History (IPK) at Leuphana University. Her scholarly interests focus on the history of art and culture from industrialization to the present, with an emphasis on philosophies of technology and media, theories of the avant-garde, materialities of everyday life, and aesthetic forms in late capitalism. Sandra Neugärtner studied design, economics, art history and cultural studies.

   

Fernanda Pitta

Portrait Fernanda Pitta ©Fernanda Pitta
Fernanda Pitta is Senior Curator at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Lecturer in the History of Art at the Escola da Cidade, in São Paulo. Her research interests focus primarily on the reception of realist and naturalist trends in Brazilian painting in the second half of the nineteenth century and how this reception impacted the construction of a paradigm of national art. At the Clark, she will be coordinating a Summer Collaborative Working Group developing a research on narrative models for long-term exhibitions of historical art collections.

  

Pia Redenius

Portrait Pia Redenius ©Leuphana
Pia Redenius studied M.Sc. Sustainability Science (Leuphana University of Lüneburg) and B.A. International Management (Worms University of Applied Sciences and Universidad del Pacífico Ecuador). Since January 2021, she has been working as a research associate at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Professorship for Sustainability and Politics, in the research project "Lower Saxony State Sustainability Strategy" on the topic of municipal sustainability. Additionally, she is involved in a project about sensory ethnography and artistic interventions on local level.

   

Ursula Richenberger

Portrait Ursula Richenberger ©Sinje Hausheider
Ursula Richenberger is a research assistant and Head of Education and Outreach for the German Port Museum in Hamburg. She studied Cultural Sciences at the Leuphana University. After her work as a research assistant at the Altona Museum she was head of the Hafenmuseum Hamburg. From 2018 until 2022, she was project manager for the development of the German Port Museum.

   

Pablo Castro Sánchez-Bermejo 

Portrait Pablo Sancez-Bermejo ©Pablo Castro Sancez Bermejo
Pablo is interested in the responses of biodiversity to global change and the conservation of nature. He is currently working on his PhD about the responses of plants and its ecophysiology to biotic interactions.

   

Saskia Samland

Portrait Saskia Samland ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Saskia Samland started working as a Research Assistant for the Institute of German Language and Literature Studies in the Faculty of Education last year after completing her Master of Education degree in Primary School Education. In her role as project coordinator, she guides and supports both educators and students in a Service Learning project focused on language education. Her enthusiasm for language education has particularly developed through completing the Certificate in German as a Second Language and working at a German school in Spain.

   

Leonie Schmitt

Portrait Leonie Schmitt ©Jannik Skander
Leonie Schmitt holds a M. Sc. in Sustainability Science from Leuphana University Lüneburg and focused her Master thesis on examining the legal frameworks for sustainable agricultural supply chains. She currently works as a research associate at a sustainability think tank specializing in agriculture and food systems. Prior to this, she was engaged with various NGOs, addressing issues related to environmental justice and sustainable finance.

   

Thomas Schomerus

Portrait Thomas Schomerus ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Thomas Schomerus has been a professor of public law since 1996 and since 2004 for energy and environmental law at Leuphana University Lüneburg. 2014 - 2021 he was a judge at the Higher Administrative Court of Lüneburg. In 2021 he was elected member of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC). He has worked on various research projects in resource protection and waste law, mining law, renewable energy and energy efficiency law, and information law and has published over 300 books and articles on these topics.

   

Vanessa Schwenker

Portrait Vanessa Schwenker ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Vanessa Schwenker is a research assistant and PhD student at the Institute for Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research interests include trust, recognition, power, body and emotions, gender and sexuality as well as qualitative research methods.

    

Timur Sevincer

Portrait Timur Sevincer ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Timur Sevincer currently administrates the professorship of psychology and transformation. His main areas of research are motivation, self-regulation, future-oriented thinking, and behaviour change in a variety of domains, including sustainability behavior.

   

Birte Siem

Portrait Birte Siem ©Leuphana
Birte Siem is a professor of Social and Organizational Psychology of Social Work at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on the overarching question of how people’s group memberships or social identities affect their experiences and behaviors in a variety of different contexts, including client-provider relationships, volunteerism, and everyday, non-professional interactions between people.

   

Anne Sonnenfroh

Portrait Anna Sonnenfroh ©Anne Sonnenfroh
Anne Sonnenfroh is a dramaturge and festival conceptionist. After completing her bachelor's degree in cultural studies/business psychology at Leuphana University, she worked at the Goethe-Institut Boston, as a consultant to the artistic director of the Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg, as the conceptual director of the international and interdisciplinary arts and culture festival fluctoplasma and as a dramaturg at the Theater Konstanz. Most recently, she was employed as head dramaturg at the Theaterhaus Jena. In her Master's programme "Staging the Arts and Media" at the University of Hildesheim, she is researching power structures in theatre and the aesthetics of the political.

   

Laura Wenzel

Portrait Laura Wenzel ©Laura Wenzel
Laura Wenzel is a research assistant and PhD student at the Institute for Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her areas of interest include (refugee-) family research, critical migration studies, trust research, and mixed-methods approaches.

Leuphana Speakers

The Leuphana Speakers are members of the university who provide content-related impulses for the Leuphana Semester and support us as participants and moderators at the evening events.

  

Jelena Bäumler

Portrait Jelena Bäumler ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Professor, Chair of Public Law and International Law with a focus on sustainability

  

Christian Brei

Christian Brei ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Vice-President of the Leuphana University

  

Lina Bürgener

Portrait Lina Bürgener ©Leuphana
Module coordinator College “Science transforms: responsible action” at Leuphana University of Lüneburg

  

Werner Härdtle

Portrait Werner Härdtle ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Professor of Ecology at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg

   

Steffi Hobuß

Steffi Hobuß ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Academic Director of Leuphana College

  

Anke Karber

Portrait von Anke Karber ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Professor, Chair of Social Pedagogy with a focus on vocational education and training research and didactics

  

Susanne Leeb

Portrait Susanne Leeb ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Susanne Leeb is art historian and professor of contemporary art at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg

   

Laura Picht-Wiggering

Portrait Laura Picht-Wiggering ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Research assistant Leuphana College

   

Sascha Spoun

Sascha Spoun ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
President of the Leuphana University

  

Ricardo Usbek

Portrait Ricardo Usbek ©Ricardo Usbek
Ricardo Usbek is Open Data Enthusiast. He works at Universtät Hamburg on his research on AI and Semantics. In 2019, he became member of the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Search Systems (IAIS).

   

Johannes van Deest

Johannes van Deest ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Coordinator DATAx

  

Henrik von Wehrden

Porträt von Henrik von Wehrden, Professor für Quantitative Methoden der Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaft ©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Professor, Chair of Quantitative Methods in Sustainability Science

   

Matthias Wenzel

Portrait Matthias wenzel ©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Professor, Chair of Business Administration, in particular Organisation

    

Michaela Wieandt

Portrait Michaela Wieandt ©Willem Thomsen
Managing Director of the Leuphana College, Coordinator of the Bachelor Studies, Expert in Management, Coaching, and Personal and Career Advising