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Successfully funded initiatives and guest invitations 

With the help of Creative Space funding, various interdisciplinary initiatives by doctoral candidates and/or postdocs at the University of Marburg could be supported between 2023 and 2025.  This funding supports the early independence of early career researchers and enables the realisation of ideas beyond the mainstream. In addition, the Creative Space project awarded funds to invite young academics with a wide range of specialist expertise for stays of varying lengths at the University of Marburg in order to create windows of opportunity for academic dialogue, exchange, new impulses and mutual enrichment.

Guest invitation: Dr. Giulia Pedrucci

Dr Ramona Jelinek-Menke (left): ‘In June 2024, we welcomed Dr Giulia Pedrucci from the University of Verona (Italy) to Marburg's Department of Religious Studies. Her exciting project ‘DisAntiquity’, which Giulia Pedrucci is currently developing, will investigate the resonance of impaired people in polytheistic-religious contexts of ancient Rome and its neighbours. She presented her project on various occasions and received valuable input from Marburg academics from different disciplines. The joint visits to the Religious Studies Collection, the Cast Collection and the Medical Anatomical Collection at the University of Marburg were particularly enriching. Our students were also actively involved.’

This enriching exchange was made possible by an interdisciplinary collaboration between Dr Ramona Jelinek-Menke (Religious Studies), Dr Maximilian Haars (History of Pharmacy and Medicine) and Peter Nothbaum (Educational Science).

Interdisciplinary initiative: The Tabaka project 

The TABAKA project focuses on the complex realities of life for LGBTIQ+ people in Kenya and scrutinises Western-influenced perspectives of media and science. Thanks to the Creative Space funding, a creative concept for 13 artistic short films was developed that vividly address topics such as family, religion, colonialism and solidarity. The content was further developed in several workshops with Kenyan experts, new inspiring ideas were collected and important collaborations were established. The next steps: incorporating personal stories, deepening the research and specifically tapping into new sources of funding in order to present and reflect on the complexity of Kenyan LGBTIQ+ realities in an authentic way.

This interdisciplinary initiative was made possible by the collaboration of Dr Mariel Reiss (Centre for Conflict Research), Dr Sarah-Mai Dang (Department of Media Studies), Matti Traußneck (Department of Political Science) and Jordan Awori (University of Nairobi, Kenya).  The artistic concept was developed by Jordan Awori: https://jordanawori.com/.