AlumniIn Focus

The next Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session takes place on Friday, September 15, 7-8.30 pm
CEST (GMT/UTC +2). The topic will be Fighting hunger in Africa - an assessment of food loss and waste in Nigeria. The speaker will be Ifeoluwa Abulude from Nigeria, PhD student in the International PhD Program for Agricultural Economics, Bioeconomy and Sustainable Food Systems (IPPAE) at Justus Liebig University Giessen/Germany. In Nigeria, he acquired both his bachelor's degree (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) and his master's degree (Landmark University, Omu-Aran) in Agricultural Extension & Rural Development.

Das nächste “Heidelberg Talks Online”-Treffen findet am Freitag, 8. September, 19-20.30 Uhr CEST (GMT/UTC +2) statt. Das Thema lautet: „Hybris - Die Reise der Menschheit - Zwischen Aufbruch und Scheitern" Referent ist Prof. Dr. Johannes Krause, internationaler Bestsellerautor und Leiter der Abteilung Archäogenetik am Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie in Leipzig. Herr Krause absolvierte ein Diplomstudium in Biochemie in Cork/Irland und Leipzig, wo er unter Nobelpreisträger Svante Pääbo mit genetischen Untersuchungen am Neandertaler und an Höhlenbären auch promovierte. In seiner Arbeit erforscht er die menschliche Evolution durch die Analyse alter DNA und hat damit wesentlich zur Entschlüsselung des Neandertaler-Genoms und des gemeinsamen genetischen Erbes von Neandertalern und Homo Sapiens beigetragen sowie den ersten genetischen Nachweis der Denisovaner, einer in Sibirien entdeckten ausgestorbenen Menschenform, geliefert.

The next Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session takes place on Friday, July 14, 8 pm - 9.30pm. The topic will be Falling Walls - What Global North may learn from Global South. The speaker will be Wolfgang Goede, international science journalist, knowledge facilitator, author, lecturer and radio host, his main research focus lies on the latest academic and technological developments of our time.

The 125th Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session takes place on Friday, June 23, 7pm-8.30pm CEST (GMT/UTC +2). The topic will be Using AI to Decipher Historical Documents. The speaker will be Walker Thompson from Connecticut/USA, a PhD student at the Slavic Institute of Heidelberg University.

The 121st HTO session takes place on Friday, April 21, 7-8.30 pm CEST (GMT/UTC +2). The topic will be „Climate Diplomacy in Kashmir Conflict: The World’s Highest Battlefield and its Environmental Cost“. The speaker will be Pakistani filmmaker and researcher Mehmood Ali Khan, member of the Central Asian Faculty Development Program at the University of Central Asia (UCA) in Naryn/Kyrgyzstan and UCA-DAAD scholar working on his PhD project on Islamisation of cinema in Iran and Pakistan.

Das nächste “Heidelberg Talks Online”-Treffen findet am Freitag, 28. April, 19-20.30 Uhr CEST (GMT/UTC +2) statt. Das Thema lautet: "Deutsche Kolonialbeute aus Togo und ihre Geschichte(n)“. Referent ist Dr. Ohiniko M. Toffa, Kulturwissenschaftler an der Universität Bremen. Nach dem Studium der Germanistik und Kulturwissenschaft in Lomé, der Hauptstadt seines Heimatlandes Togo, promovierte er an der Uni Bremen 2019 mit einem Stipendium des DAAD. Bis März 2023 war er wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an den Völkerkundemuseen von Leipzig und Dresden und beschäftigte sich dort im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojekts mit der Provenienz von Sammlungen aus der früheren deutschen „Musterkolonie“ Togo (1884-1919).

The next Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session of 2023 takes place on Friday, March 3, 7-8.30 pm CET (GMT/UTC +1). The topic will be “The Enlightenment – a European invention or a gift from indigenous cultures?” The speaker will be Wolfgang Goede, international science journalist, science facilitator, author, lecturer and radio host based in Munich/Germany and Medellín/Colombia. He received an M.A. degree in Communication Science and Political Science from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and his main research focus lies on the latest academic and technological developments of our time.

The next “Heidelberg Talks Online” meeting will take place on Friday, 17 March, 7-8:30pm CET (GMT/UTC +1). The topic will be: “Sensitivität hochalpiner Geosysteme auf den Klimawandel seit 1850 – Einblicke in die Arbeit der DFG-Forschungsgruppe SEHAG”. The speaker will be Dr Florian Haas, researcher at the Department of Physical Geography at the Catholic University Eichstädt-Ingolstadt and project manager at SEHAG.

The third Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session of 2023 takes place on Friday, February 3, 7-8.30pm CET (GMT/UTC +1). The speaker will be DAAD alumnus Dr. Alaksiej Kačanovič, post doctoral researcher at Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb/Croatia. He obtained his PhD degree in 2020 in theoretical particle physics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Having been expelled from Belarusian State University for his political engagement in the democracy movement in Belarus as a member of
the social democratic party “Hramada”, he received a Licentitate and a Master´s degree from Wroclaw University/Poland. In 2006, he obtained the Konstanty Kalinowski scholarship.

The fourth Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) session of 2023 takes place on Friday, February 10, 7-8.30 pm CET (GMT/UTC +1). The speaker will be Prof. Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam/The Netherlands and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. His main area of interest is the history and sociology of mass violence, with a particular focus on the modern and contemporary Middle East. He has won several academic awards and held visiting positions in Dublin, Vancouver, Budapest, Toronto, Los Angeles and Edinburgh. He has published various books and articles, is an editor of the Journal of Perpetrator Research and coordinated the Tadamon Massacre project.

The next Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) takes place on Friday, January 27, 2023. The speaker will be Eunice Chiu, PhD student in Educational Science at the Faculty of Cultural and Behavioural Studies at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg. She holds a BA degree in Anthropology and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include green policy and the environment, migrational studies and educational justice.

The next “Heidelberg Talks Online” meeting will take place on Friday, 20 Jan 2023. The speaker is Jana Mestmäcker, psychologist (M. Sc.) and activist of the climate protection alliance "Last Generation". After a year abroad as a student in Buenos Aires, she studied psychology at the universities of Hamburg, Lübeck and Örebro (Sweden), graduating with a Master's degree in 2017. Afterwards, Ms Mestmäcker gained professional experience in a specialised psychological publishing house before working as a psychology lecturer in Göttingen from 2019. She gave up this work last year in order to devote all her energy to the goals of the "Last Generation".

The next Heidelberg Talks Online (HTO) takes place on Friday, December 2, 2022.
The speaker will be Dr Maria Rentetzi, Professor and chair of Science, Technology and Gender studies at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg.

This week's Heidelberg Talk Online will be about cinematic approaches to understanding artificial intelligence/artificial consciousness.
The speaker will be Dr Amar Singh, Assistant Professor of English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He is currently pursuing post-doctoral research at Bergische Universität Wuppertal/Germany, where he is working with the AI in Humanity Project Group.

The next Heidelberg Talk Online (HTO) will take place on 25 Nov 2022. Speakers will be Laura Plöger, regional scientist with a focus on Latin America and active for 15 years at Welthungerhilfe in Germany and abroad, and Patrick Nathaus, Asian scientist with a focus on Central and East Asia, team leader at Welthungerhilfe since this year and previously manager in the private sector, most recently at Audi China.