Academics & Guests

This year’s hosts are historian Christina Wessely, AI expert Ricardo Usbeck, peace and security researcher Hana Attia, and developmental psychologist Manuel Bohn. The professors lay the foundation for the study program and moderate the focus interviews on the stage of the Libeskind Auditorium.

The academics provide subject-specific guidance to the project groups: they offer an initial orientation to the project topic, clarify questions of understanding, and contribute both critical and visionary perspectives. In total, 30 professors, research associates, lecturers, and experts from across the university and beyond support the students in their first project studies.

Guests

Gregor Gysi

©Deutscher Bundestag / Inga Haar
Gregor Gysi, Member of the Bundestag & former parliamentary leader of "Die Linke"

   

Armin Grunwald

©KIT
Armin Grunwald, Professor for Philosophy of Technology & Director of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB)

   

Claudia Kalisch

©Claudia Kalisch
Claudia Kalisch, Mayoress of Lüneburg

   

Amanda Seed

©Amanda Seed
Amanda Seed, Professor in Origins of Mind in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews

   

Daniel Simu

©Jona Harnischmacher
Daniel Simu, artist & creative engineer

   

Mona Saleh

©Universität Duisburg-Essen
Mona Saleh, Research Associate at the University of Duisburg-Essen, focusing on international organizations in the Middle East and African Union

   

Tanja Kubes

©Kubes
Tanja Kubes, researcher at FU Berlin focusing on feminist AI, gender in STEM, and human-robot relations

   

Kärin Nickelsen

©LMU/Oliver Jung
Kärin Nickelsen, Professor for history of science at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

   

Johanna Seibt

©Johanna Seibt
Johanna Seibt, Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus University & Head of the Research Unit for Robophilosophy

   

Tobias Bunde

©Maria Conradi
Tobias Bunde, Director of Research & Policy at the Munich Security Conference

   

Michael Hagner

©Michel Büchel/ ETH Zürich
Michael Hagner, Professor emeritus of the history and epistemology of the human sciences at ETH Zürich

Hosts

Hana Attia

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Hana Attia is an Assistant Professor of Global Peace and Security at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (Institute for Middle East Studies). The primary focus of her research is on how states and international organizations respond to and overcome national and international challenges to peace and security posed by both state and non-state actors. A major area of my research examines the use of economic sanctions to address issues including nuclear proliferation, terrorism, democratic backsliding, and armed conflicts. Her ongoing research analyzes the decision-making processes behind such state-led coercive policies, as well as citizens’ perspectives, particularly public opinion on the use of coercive foreign policy tools and foreign policy more generally.

   

Manuel Bohn

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Manuel Bohn is a tenure-track assistant professor of Developmental Psychology at the Institute of Psychology in Education at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is interested in the psychological foundations of human communication. His current research focuses on how children's everyday experiences relate to their communicative and cognitive development across cultural settings. For a broader perspective, he studies the communicative and cognitive abilities of great apes. His goal is to understand the shared and unique aspects of human cognition that allow children to learn language.

  

Ricardo Usbeck

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
In 2021, Prof. Usbeck took over the Junior Professorship for Semantic Systems at the University of Hamburg. Afterwards, in 2023, he was appointed at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He works in and leads several national and international research projects on knowledge graphs, large language models, chatbots and AI for social good. He is interested in transformation-related domains such as sustainability and creative spaces for technology. Ricardo Usbeck tries to build a bridge between research and application.

  

Christina Wessely

©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Christina Wessely is a historian and, since 2014, Professor of Cultural History of Knowledge at Leuphana University. Her research focuses on the history of the modern life sciences, particularly on the history of human–animal relations and their institutions, as well as on the history of ecology. As the author of literary nonfiction, she also addresses topics such as the history of motherly love and the question of the university in the present.

  

Academics

  

Lars Alberth

©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Lars Alberth is a sociologist and professor for Theories and Methods of Childhood Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. After he finished his PhD on the social definitions of European culture, he moved to Umeå (Sweden) to study space and emotions in gyms and to Durham New Hampshire to do research on childhood victimization. He is mainly concerned with institutional responses to violence against children and its definitions by law, professional groups, organizations, politics, and families according to asymmetries of generation and gender. But he also has a strong interest in the definitions of bodies, spaces, objects, and emotions as devices and nodes of power and social inequalities.

  

Alice Bertram

©Heidi Scherm
Dr. Alice Bertram is a postdoctoral researcher in public and international law at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She wrote her doctoral dissertation Time as a Resource in Law, exploring how legal frameworks shape the fair distribution of time as a vital condition for autonomy and participation. Her current research focuses on sustainability law, the law of the sea, and the legal-theoretical foundations of societal transformation.

   

Veronica Bremer

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Veronica Bremer is a post-doctoral research associate, lecturer, and advisor at Studium Individuale, the liberal arts programme at Leuphana. Her work explores the photography of Mariana Yampolsky and the sculpture of Elizabeth Catlett as part of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)) project „TransExil. Negotiations of Aesthetics and Community in Post-Revolutionary Mexico." Her work also explores visual culture and transformative pedagogy through visual and experiential learning and the didactics of art history. 

   

Andrew Brogan

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Andrew is a Lecturer in Studium Individuale who specialises in higher education, anarchism, and critical pedagogy. He has a PhD in Political Theory and spent several years teaching on an Education Studies programme in the UK before moving to Germany. At Leuphana he teaches courses on the development of freedom in European modernity, and the analysis of contemporary social issues.

   

Franca Bülow

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Dr. Franca A. Bülow is a Research Associate at Leuphana University Lüneburg, affiliated with the Professorship for Governance and Sustainability. Her work lies at the intersection of sustainability governance, communication, and behavioural change. She coordinates an interdisciplinary research consortium based in Lower Saxony that examines the governance of sustainability in global value chains. Her research interests include climate resilience, sustainability governance, and issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

   

Viola Hakkarainen

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Dr. Viola Hakkarainen is a substitute professor of Transdisciplinarity for Sustainability Transformation at the School of Sustainability. Her work explores how diverse values and knowledges can be incorporated into just and radical sustainability transformations. The focus of her research is on science-society-policy interfaces and the governance of social-ecological systems, with an emphasis on the epistemological, ethical and power dynamics that underpin sustainability research and practice.

   

Liselotte Hermes da Fonseca

©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.

   

Claire Grauer

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Claire Grauer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sustainability Education Research Group, School of Sustainability. She is interested in the relationship between personal needs and sustainability and how to address this in formal education settings. Her current research and teaching focus on promoting decolonial perspectives in teacher training and educational settings.

    

Ulf Hahnel

©Leuphana/Tengo Tabatadze
Ulf investigates individual and collective human judgment and decision-making and the underlying psychological mechanisms in the context of global climate change and the energy transition. To account for the global and dynamic nature of climate change he examines variation in judgment and decisions across nations around the globe and across time. His research moreover aims to develop evidence-based behavioral interventions to promote more sustainable decisions. To transfer findings from the level of individual decisions to the system level, he develops interdisciplinary methodology to integrate experimental decision data into energy system and climate models.

    

Lukas Hakelberg

©Lukas Hakelberg
Lukas Hakelberg is Professor for Political Economy at Leuphana University’s Institute of Political Science. His main object of study is the impact of global, societal, and historical factors on state financing. In particular, Hakelberg has analyzed the role of power and hegemony in negotiating global tax agreements. He also leads an ERC project group, analyzing the impact of colonial economic structures and racism on the emergence of tax havens in the Global South.

    

Seraphia Heitmann

©Seraphina Heitmann
Seraphia Heitmann: is interested in YOU and research. Her work is based on four years of the study of paedagogy and psychology, an intense study of Asian cultures and languages – in Germany and abroad – Art History and many years of international research. The most recent professional activity as Assoc. Prof. at Nalanda University, India, lead her to contacts with many diverse Asian and other cultures of South- and Southeast Asia, Africa, Turkey etc., special acts of balance. With her two sides, theory and practice, she is especially interested in the topic 'shift of perspectives'. Exchange of thoughts, experiences, and selfunderstanding of intelligence may result in a shift, an opening for new ways of perceiving life. For a self-determined and invaluable lifestyle she invites everybody interested to explore the terrain of intelligence involved in a 'Shift of perspectives' and cooperate in presenting a top result.

   

Christine Heybl

©Christine Heybl
Christine Heybl studied philosophy, biology and ethnology in Potsdam and Berlin and finished her thesis about climate justice in 2016. In the field of environmental and climate protection, she gained professional experience in different environments and topics as she engaged as a freelancer for climate justice, worked for several NGOs for climate protection and was in charge of a climate adaption project in a district administration. Her main interests are organic agriculture and permaculture.

   

Nike Hornbostel

©Nike Hornbostel
Nike is a Change Agent, Network-Trainer and Social Solo-entrepreneur. She is living in a community of visionaries in the nature close by Lüneburg. Deeply connected in the bioregion of the Lüneburger Heide as well as driven by international management, she is happy to share her sustainable transformation.

   

Johannes Lohse

©Johannes Lohse
Prof. Dr. Johannes Lohse is W1-professor of Law and Economics at Leuphana University. His research focuses on behavioral and environmental economics, in particular on public goods over generations and the influence of incentives on environmental protection. He was previously assistant and associate professor at Birmingham.

   

Ilsemargret Luttmann

©Ilsemargret Luttmann
As a long-time external lecturer at the Leuphana University Ilsemargret Luttmann enthusiastically engages in topics related to contemporary socio-cultural developments on the African continent, and she discusses questions of the colonial legacy in Europe. She built up a strong cooperation with the annual African film festival AugenBlicke in Hamburg which she turned into an integral part of her courses. Her academic interest is supported by regular visits to western African countries. Besides she works as an independent artist.

   

Philipp Sandermann

©Leuphana/Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Philipp Sandermann is a professor of social pedagogy at Leuphana University Lüneburg. His fields of interest include (comparative) welfare systems research, child and youth welfare research, refugee family studies and trust research.

   

Anna Sawallisch

©Anna Sawallisch
Anna Sawallisch is a PhD student in International Politics at Humboldt University of Berlin. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Copenhagen and a Bachelor’s degree from Leuphana University Lüneburg. Her research focuses on the intersection of development, political economy, and political behavior — with a particular interest in how information environments shape political attitudes and actions. 

   

Valentin Schatz

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Prof. Dr. Valentin Schatz has been Junior Professor at the School of Sustainability and the Institute of Sustainability Governance (INSUGO) since September 2022. Prof. Dr. Valentin Schatz is also an associate member of Leuphana Law School and the Leuphana Center for European and International Law (CEIL). He is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, member of the Board of Directors of the International Foundation for the Law of the Sea (IFLOS), and German delegate in the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Protection of People at Sea. Prof. Dr. Valentin Schatz frequently advises NGO, governmental authorities and think tanks on questions of international law, such as maritime security, marine environmental protection and fisheries.

   

Birte Siem

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/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, teacher-student interactions, volunteerism, and everyday, non-professional interactions between people.

   

Charlotte von Wulffen

©Leuphana Universität
Charlotte von Wulffen works for the Social Innovation Community at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She focuses her academic and practical work on the role of communities in fostering transformative and regenerative economies. Also, she is a board member of CSX Netzwerk e.V., where she promotes the development and distribution of community-supported economic models.

   

Natascha Zaun

©Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Leuphana
Natascha Zaun is Professor of Public Policy and Law at the Institute of Political Science at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Prior to coming to Lüneburg, she was first Assistant and later Associate Professor at European Institute of the London School of Economics. Natascha specialises in EU policymaking with a special focus on policymaking in the area of immigration and asylum as well as the global refugee regime.