Executive Committee

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Linguistics

Project: Cross-linguistic influence in multilingual children and adults: evidence from the real-time processing of Romanian wh-questions

_{This project investigates language acquisition and processing of Romanian in a multilingual context in Germany, the UK, and Romania. It addresses the real-time comprehension and production of both the minority (heritage) language and the majority (societal) language in child and adult multilingual speakers with three main aims: The first is to break new ground in our understanding of how the different languages of multilingual speakers interact and shape their language processing mechanisms. The second is to determine the nature of the potential discrepancies between various groups of multilinguals and the extent to which factors like cross-linguistic influence and language dominance affect bilingual processing. The third is to disseminate the empirical findings in accessible terms to parents, language teachers and other stakeholders to help them make informed decisions about multilingual practices in the school and the home.
Romanian is a relatively understudied language in multilingual contexts despite the large Romanian diaspora in Europe. To capture the range of variability characteristic of multilingual development, as well as address effects of language dominance, the target groups will include (i) Romanian heritage speakers living in Germany and in the UK, (ii) German heritage speakers living in Romania, as well as (iii) Romanian monolinguals. The choice of language combinations (Romanian-German, Romanian-English) is motivated by grammatical properties that these languages have or not in common. Such properties allow to examine how linguistic similarities or differences modulate the real-time comprehension and production of complex syntactic structures. The investigation will combine behavioural (picture-selection, production) and psycholinguistic (eye-tracking) methods and will compare not only between multilinguals and monolinguals, but also across various groups of multilinguals. The findings of the project will have implications for theoretical models of language processing, and for theoretical and practical aspects of language learning.}

Research Fellow since 08/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Biology

Project: Natural variation of autophagy in Arabidopsis thaliana

_{Plants, due to their sessile nature, are unable to avoid the environmental changes they often face and are thus forced to adapt to the new conditions. Autophagy, or self eating, is a catabolic process which is important for nutrient recycling under both normal and adverse conditions and, thus, can be viewed as an adaptation mechanism. While autophagy is conserved throughout the eukaryotes, plants can survive and reproduce successfully under normal conditions even when the process is impaired. In contrast to that, prolonged darkness is often fatal to plants which are deficient in the autophagic pathway. Recent data on chlorophyll acquired by inducing autophagy through prolonged darkness in a number of Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes, originating from the entire natural range of the species showed strong variations.}

Fellow since 04/2020

Publications on KOPS

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Project: Time-Dependent Moments

^{In this project I want to investigate time-dependent moments of distributions (functions) from partial differential equations. Recently moment problem implementations showed the usefulness to find solutions of partial differential equations. I extended the moment problem in a systematic and general way to derivatives of moments and proved the existence of solutions of a PDE. Both methods (the moment theoretic and the PDE methods) shall be combined in this project to improve the theoretical foundation of moment problem implementations for PDEs. Hence, the field of the moment problem and the field of partial differential equations will benefit from the results of this project. The University of Konstanz provides the perfect research environment for this project since it has with Prof. S. Kuhlmann and Prof. M. Schweighofer strong active researchers in the field of the moment problem and students are provided with a lecture about the moment problem. As an additional very active researcher in the field of the moment problem the applicant will cooperate with Prof. R. Curto from the University of Iowa, USA, on this project.}

Fellow since 03/2022

Website of MoPat conference

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of Literature

Project: Cloud gaming atlas: from Earth's metabolism to the longing for radiant infrastructures

_{The project seeks to expand my research agenda into the realm of cloud gaming infrastructure while advancing further into the study of the interdependencies between digital technologies and the living environment. This is an important theme considering the still underexplored relations of gaming with the climate crisis. For this same reason, it is important to conceptualize how the infrastructure of digital media relates to natural systems. The emergence of planetary-scale remote gaming is historically coinciding with a broader cultural shift to "planetarity", in which issues related to the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change, renewable energy sources, and environmental regeneration are more clearly recognized as an issue of the commons. Thus, this research project will seek to assess the continuum between technology and nature in the infrastructure of cloud gaming, while also taking into account how the industry is preparing to manage the environmental problems associated with its escalation.}

Postdoctoral Fellow since 06/2022

Responsibilities

Affiliated with the Department of History and Sociology

Project: Colonialism, the "Counter-Crusade" and the early development of Crusader studies

_{Medieval Arabic chronicles constitute a key source base for Crusader studies. Despite this, many historians rely upon nineteenth century translations of several vital Arabic literary sources. This project will reverse-engineer the traditional methodology of Crusade historiography. Rather than relying on these translated materials, it examines the extent to which colonial attitudes influenced their compilation, whilst simultaneously reviewing the legacy of this editorial process upon some of the key approaches, narrative structures and conclusions of modern Crusader studies. Accordingly, this project explores the latent challenges that anachronous editorial practices present to those engaging with difficult texts from the medieval past.}

Postdoctoral Fellow since 06/2022

Responsibilities

• Applications and Support of Postdoctoral, Research, Senior and Associated Fellows
• Research Programme
• Selection Procedure
• Development and Administration of Funding Instruments
• Coordination of the decision-making bodies of the Zukunftskolleg
• Development of Workshops, Seminars, and Co-teachings
• Writing Institutional Reports