Research institute New Directors at Marsilius Kolleg
Press Release No. 113/2026
22 October 2026
Jale Tosun and Matthias Weidemüller at the helm of the interdisciplinary research center – the 19th class of fellows has started work
Political scientist Prof. Dr. Jale Tosun and physicist Prof. Dr. Matthias Weidemüller have assumed the directorship of the Marsilius Kolleg of Heidelberg University. In this capacity, they follow theologian Prof. Dr. Friederike Nüssel and genome researcher Prof. Dr. Michael Boutros, who directed the interdisciplinary research center for six years. They took office at the same time as a new class of fellows, who began their work at the Kolleg in the winter semester 2026/2027: 13 Heidelberg researchers are to work on projects across their various disciplines and engage in interdisciplinary discussions.
Prof. Dr. Frauke Melchior, Rector of Heidelberg University, is grateful to the retiring directors for their great commitment. “The Marsilius Kolleg further consolidated its role at the heart of our Excellence Strategy thanks to the dedicated leadership of Friederike Nüssel and Michael Boutros. With Jale Tosun and Matthias Weidemüller, Marsilius Kolleg is again led by two proven and very well-connected academics who will continue to develop it and come up with new initiatives for addressing socially relevant issues,” the Rector underlines.
Jale Tosun is a professor at the Institute for Political Science and deputy director of the Heidelberg Center for the Environment. Her teaching and research interests include the comparative analysis of state regulation in the fields of the environment, energy, climate change and sustainability, as well as European integration. Matthias Weidemüller holds a professorship for experimental physics at the Institute for Physics. From 2019 to 2023 he was also Vice-Rector for Innovation and Transfer at Heidelberg University. His research deals with the quantum dynamics of atomic and molecular systems, in particular with investigating and controlling quantum many-body systems. The new directors’ three-year term of office began in October 2026.
The 19th class of fellows at the Marsilius Kolleg comprises Professors Silvana Deilen (translation studies), Jan Christian Gertz (theology), Christian Gille (medicine), Fred Hamprecht (scientific computing), Adriana Hanulíková (linguistics), Annette Haußmann (theology), Roland Herzog (mathematics), Ute Hüsken (Indology), Peter Marschik (child and youth psychiatry), Friedrich Röpke (astrophysics), Bastian Schiller (psychology), Birgit Spinath (psychology) and Michael Strube (computational linguistics). In the context of joint projects, the fellows will address topics such as social closeness to machines, and artificial intelligence in higher education.
The Marsilius Kolleg of Heidelberg University is designed to bring together hand-picked researchers from different scholarly cultures and thereby foster research-related dialogue between the humanities, law and social sciences, on the one hand, and the natural and life sciences, on the other.