The president of University of Hamburg, Prof Dr Hauke Heekeren, welcomes the new members of Ingrid Piller’s Humboldt Professorship Team

Attentive readers will remember that in May this year we advertised six doctoral and postdoctoral positions to conduct research related to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” in the Literacy in Diversity Settings (LiDS) Research Center at University of Hamburg, as part of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship awarded to Ingrid Piller.

In response, we received 270 applications. While it was exciting to see that there is so much interest in our work, it was also heart-breaking to have to make so many tough decisions from an amazing pool of highly qualified candidates.

After conducting Zoom and on-campus interviews in July and August, I am now pleased to report that the Dream Team has started their work at the beginning of November. We have six extremely talented and accomplished early career researchers joining the Language-on-the-Move community, and in this post, they are introducing themselves in their own words.

Jenia Yudytska

I’m Jenia Yudytska, a Ukrainian-Austrian postdoc. I did my PhD in computational sociolinguistics at the University of Hamburg, investigating the influence of technological affordances on language in online communication. My current research interest focuses on how migrants use language technologies, particularly machine translation, as a resource in their everyday life. Since 2022, I have also been heavily involved in the organisation of grassroots mutual aid online communities for Ukrainian forced migrants in Austria.

I’m particularly excited for this chance to jump into applied linguistics, and the chance to combine both my love for research and my desire to make a social impact!

Juan Sánchez

¡Hola!

I’m Juan Felipe Sánchez Guzmán, a Colombian student and researcher based in Hamburg. In my home country, I conducted research on gender diversity and language teaching, as well as on the implementation of the Colombian Ministry of Education’s bilingualism programs involving foreign tutors in public institutions within a predominantly monolingual context. Building on my passion for languages, my own migration experience, and those of fellow immigrants, my Master’s research explored the integration of Latinx nurses into the German healthcare system.

I look forward to showcasing through research the values and strengths that multilingual communities bring to education, healthcare, and society as a whole.

Mara Kyrou

My name is Mara Kyrou and I hold an MA degree in Linguistics and Communication from the University of Amsterdam. My Masters research explored language policies, practices and ideologies as perceived by teaching professionals in multilingual non-formal education settings in Greece and the Netherlands. My research interests also include professional and intercultural communication in transnational work contexts, gender theory and theater education. I have also contributed to the design and implementation of language learning programs for students with a (post-)migrant background with international NGOs.

In this research group we are working with (auto-)ethnographies and focusing on globally emerging topics hence we don’t just study things as they are but as we humans are.

Martin Derince

Roj baş!

I am Martin Serif Derince. I carried out my PhD research on Kurdish heritage language education in Germany at the University of Potsdam. I have conducted research and have publications on bilingualism and multilingualism in education, language policy, heritage language education, statelessness, and family multilingualism. After long years of professional work in municipality, non-governmental organizations and community associations dedicated to promoting multilingualism in various contexts, I am excited to explore new terrains in academia, grow together intellectually, and contribute to efforts for social transformation and justice.

Nicole Marinaro

My name is Nicole Marinaro, and I did my PhD at Belfast’s Ulster University’s School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, focusing on addressing communication difficulties between patients and healthcare professionals. My research interests include language policy, sociolinguistics and linguistic justice, with a focus on the inclusion of linguistically diverse speakers. I am also passionate about language teaching and dissemination of academic knowledge.

I am particularly excited to become part of a diverse and interdisciplinary team, to learn from each other over the next years and to make a real contribution to a more linguistically just society.

Olga Vlasova

My name is Olga Vlasova. My research journey started in Prague at the Charles University where I obtained my BA degree in sociology. Later, I completed my Master’s degree in social policy at the University of Bremen and University of Amsterdam. During these years I have been contributing to research in the fields of migration and labour studies, with a particular focus on solidarity practices with migrant workers in the European labour markets. Apart from that, I’m a passionate volunteer and help newcomers with their integration into Hamburg society.

One thing my life journey has taught me is: “Be brave and follow your ideas and passions!”

What’s next?

Over the next 4 years, our work will be in the following five areas:

• We will conduct a set of interlinked ethnographies to better understand linguistic diversity and social participation across the lifespan
• We will make a novel methodological and epistemological contribution related to qualitative multilingual data sharing
• We will build capacity in international networked education research (see also WERA IRN Literacy in Multilingual Contexts)
• We will work with community stakeholders to help improve language policies and practices and make institutional communication more accessible
• We will share knowledge and contribute to a greater valorization of linguistic diversity

Along the way, we will keep you all posted, of course. Watch this space!

Early next year, we will also advertise another researcher position on our team so that’s another reason to follow our work

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Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship Awards 2025

The 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award Recipients (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

The awards ceremony and research symposium for the Anneliese Maier Research Awards took place in Berlin from September 11 to 13, 2018. I was honoured to attend as one of eight international researchers to receive this year’s Anneliese Maier Research Award.

The Anneliese Maier Research Award is a life-time achievement award that is presented by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the award seeks to help promote the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany.

Each Anneliese Maier Research Award is valued at €250,000 and is granted to outstanding humanities scholars and social scientists from outside Germany who are nominated by collaborative partners at German universities and research institutions. The award is designed to finance research collaboration over a period of up to five years with colleagues in Germany.

This year’s eight award winners were selected from a total of 111 nominees from 30 countries. At the research symposium accompanying the award ceremony proper, each awardee presented their research. It was inspiring to learn about truly pioneering research grappling with universal questions of the human condition as well as fundamental social challenges of our time.

Is there a connection between the Global Financial Crisis and domestic violence?

Yes, says Professor Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University; Universität Duisburg-Essen), who explored the gender dimensions of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and showed how the crisis has cascaded into all realms of social life. Women have been particularly affected by the crisis, as is, inter alia, evidenced by rising rates of domestic violence in the UK.

The 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award Winners and their sponsors and academic hosts (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

Does everyone’s vote count equally in a liberal democracy?

No, says Professor José Maurício Domingues (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung; Freie Universität Berlin), who examined theories of modernity and showed that there is an oligarchical element at the heart of all liberal democracies.

Are more and more migrants too lazy to learn the language of their host society?

No, says Professor Ingrid Piller (Macquarie University; Universität Hamburg). In my own presentation I interrogated the meaning of migrant linguistic integration. While language learning is increasingly constructed as a relatively banal matter of individual responsibility, it is in reality a highly complex process that is accomplished in interaction.

Should you always trust your own senses?

No, says Professor Pascal Mamassian (École Normale Supérieure de Paris; Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), who researches visual perception. In his talk he explored problems of meta-cognition: How good are we at evaluating our own cognition? How good are we at estimating the validity of our own interpretations? In a series of striking experiments he showed that we are certainly not as good as most of us like to think.

Is gossip helpful in moral decision making?

Yes, says Professor Douglas Cairns (University of Edinburgh; Technische Universität Dresden). This counterintuitive finding comes from his analyses of Ancient Greek tragedies, where imagined dialogues with and about other people function as a form of distributed cognition. Basically, gossiping about other people can serve as a scaffold to explore our own emotions and thoughts.

Did Iceland alter the course of the history of the Ottoman Empire?

Yes, says Professor Alan Mikhail (Yale University; Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg). Unlikely as it may seem, tiny little Iceland fundamentally altered the course of the history of the Ottoman Empire in the 18^th century. This was despite the fact that it was not part of the Ottoman Empire, had no political relations with the Ottoman Empire and, in fact, few if any Ottomans knew that Iceland even existed. The explanation for this conundrum stems from the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano in 1783, which resulted in a climate catastrophe. Volcanic activity in faraway Iceland disrupted the Indian Ocean monsoon and as a result the Nile did not flood for a few years. The consequence of that was extremely poor harvests and hence a severe food shortage. The latter led to social unrest in Egypt and the progressive collapse of Ottoman political power.

Does it make a difference whether historical periodization is by dynasty or by century?

Yes, says Professor Wang Hui (Tsinghua University; Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), who examined the reorganization of Chinese history in the 20^th century from an indigenous periodization (by dynasty) to the globally uniform periodization by century. The 20^th century is thus not only momentous in Chinese history for the usual reasons (revolution, occupation, founding of the PRC, etc.) but also because Chinese history became globally synchronized.

Left to right: Enno Aufderheide (Secretary General, Humboldt Foundation); Jan Louis (Vice-President, Hamburg University); Ingrid Gogolin; Ingrid Piller; Thomas Rachel (State Secretary, Ministry of Education and Research) (Image: Humboldt-Stiftung/Jens Jeske)

Can you just bag a gift and walk away?

No, says Professor Annelise Riles (Northwestern University; Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung Halle). The lawyer and anthropologist used Marcel Mauss‘ famous book The Gift to probe the future of the university in our inward-looking times. Gifts are a sign of trust. Therefore, they place the recipient under an obligation to live up to that trust: not only to reciprocate but also to pay it forward.

What’s next?

It was a truly inspiring experience to be able to spend three days in the company of such remarkable people: in addition to the awardees, their academic hosts, Humboldt Fellows from around the world and representatives of the Humboldt Foundation were in attendance.

It is particularly gratifying that the funding from the Anneliese Maier Research Award will allow my sponsors, Professors Ingrid Gogolin and Drorit Lengyel from Hamburg University, and myself to act on that inspiration. The award will enable us to conduct comparative research into the language learning experiences of newly arrived migrants in Australia and Germany. In a first step we will soon be advertising a bespoke PhD scholarship for a candidate to pursue a joint PhD under our supervision at both Hamburg and Macquarie universities. Watch this space!

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• Ingrid Piller receives 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award