Team

Ulf Brunnbauer has been Professor for the History of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg since 2008. He defended his Habilitation at Berlin Free University and gained his PhD from the University of Graz. He is Director ofthe Leibniz Institute for East and South-East European Studies (IOS) and Co-Director of the Graduate School for East and South-East European Studies. His research focuses on migration, social history, and nations and nationalism. He has been Spokesman of the Executive Board of the Leibniz Regensburg since its founding in September 2019.

Anne Brüske joined the Board of the ScienceCampus in October 2023. Her research and teaching focuses primarily on the borderlands and boundary areas of academic disciplines and cultural spaces. Her work spans cultural studies and sociology, addressing interdisciplinary questions relating to space as an aspect of cultural exchange and global dynamics.

Birgit Hebel-Bauridl (Akademische Oberrätin, American Studies, UR) is Managing Director of the Regensburg European American Forum (REAF). Her current project focuses on embodied memory and multiscalar European-American cultural negotiations at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum. Further research interests include multiscalar performance; critical regionalism; nationalsocialism and transgenerational trauma; resistant epistemologies and critical whiteness studies. She served on the CITAS Executive Board April 2019 until October 2022, when the Center was merged into DIMAS. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Cindy Wittke graduated in international law and leads the Political Science Department at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), where she is working on several projects, including an exploration of international law in the post-Soviet space. She received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin. She joined UR in April 2025, as a Professor of Normativity in International Politics at the Faculty of Law. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Volha Bartash is ethnologist and historian of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union exploring themes including the Nazi genocide and World War II. She is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Margins of Memory.

Marie Beyrich researches on administrative, constitutional, and European law, exploring themes including migration law.

UR, Doctoral Researcher in American Studies and Administrative Manager of the Regensburg European-American Forum (REAF)

Anne Brüske joined the Board of the ScienceCampus in October 2023. Her research and teaching focuses primarily on the borderlands and boundary areas of academic disciplines and cultural spaces. Her work spans cultural studies and sociology, addressing interdisciplinary questions relating to space as an aspect of cultural exchange and global dynamics.

Klaus Buchenau researches on the history of religion in Eastern Europe. He is currently researching on the link between religion and corruption in Russia and Serbia.

Volker Depkat has been Professor of American Studies in Regensburg since 2005. He completed his Habilitation at the University of Greifswald and gained his PhD from the University of Göttingen. His research focus lies in US and North American history, including European-American connections. He is supervising two of the ScienceCampus doctoral researchers, Thalia Prokopiou and Jon Matlack.

Ger Duijzings researches on themes such as war, violence and memory as well as identity, religion and politics in Southeastern and Eastern Europe. He is supervisor of Igor Stipic and Vita Zelenska, two of the ScienceCampus doctoral researchers, and head of the Area Studies initiative SeeFField in Regensburg.

Before joining UR in 2002, she previously held full professorships at the University of Wales (Bangor), the University of Alberta (Canada) and the University of Bergen (Norway). Her research and teaching sit at the multiple intersections between digital media and game studies, cultural studies, literary studies, and applied linguistics.

Arevik Gnutzmann-Mkrtchyan is Academic Vice Director of IOS. Following PhD in Economics at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 2014 with a thesis on the economics of trade agreements, shewas a postdoctoral researcher and then proferssor. She has served as an economic consultant/research associate for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, the World Trade Organization, and BEROC.

Guido Hausmann is the head of the history division at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and Professor of History of Southeast and Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg with a focus on Russia/the Soviet Union and Ukraine. He gained his PhD from the University of Cologne and defended his Habilitation at the University of Bielefeld. Since 2024, he has been co-speaker of the DAAD-funded Denkraum Ukraine Centre for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies at UR.

Birgit Hebel-Bauridl (Akademische Oberrätin, American Studies, UR) is Managing Director of the Regensburg European American Forum (REAF). Her current project focuses on embodied memory and multiscalar European-American cultural negotiations at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum. Further research interests include multiscalar performance; critical regionalism; nationalsocialism and transgenerational trauma; resistant epistemologies and critical whiteness studies. She served on the CITAS Executive Board April 2019 until October 2022, when the Center was merged into DIMAS. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

Andreas Hilger researches on leadership and organization, exploring themes including market entry strategies and human research management. He focuses especially on Germany and the Czech Republic.

Ralf Junkerjürgen researches on culture and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries exploring themes including cinema, popular culture, and cultural history. He is supervisor of Daniela Weinbach, a former ScienceCampus doctoral researcher, and director of the Spanish Research Centre (CEH), one of the ScienceCampus partner institutions.

Andrea Kaltenbrunner is a historian exploring themes including antisemitism, populism, and nationbuilding in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. She is a member of the steering board of the Area Studies initiative SeeFField.

Tatiana Klepikova researches on Slavic Culture and Literature with a PHD in Slavic Literature. She is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Margins of Memory.

Sabine Koller has been Professor of Slavic-Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg since 2013. Her research interests include Slavic-Jewish and Yiddish literature, processes of cultural transfer and translation and the Eastern Jewish cultural renaissance.

Rike Krämer-Hoppe studied law in Groningen and Bremen, where she was awarded a doctorate. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at the  Jean Monnet Center, New York University, USA and a visiting scholar at the  Insper Institute in São Paulo in 2022 before joining UR. She has published extensively on climate change, the environment and law.

Katherina Kucher studied History and Slavic Language and Literature. She habilitated at the University of Tübingen in 2020 with a study on the history of childhood in nineteenth-century Russia.

Mirja Lecke researches on Slavic Literature and Culture, exploring themes including russian literature of the imperial and post-Soviet age. She is deputy speaker of the interdisciplinary project Denkraum Ukraine at the University of Regensburg. She is supervisor of Elisa Mucciarelli, a ScienceCampus predoctoral researcher.

Rainer Liedtke researches on European history, exploring themes including British and Irish history, urban history, and Jewish history. He was first supervisor of Cornelius Merz, a former ScienceCampus doctoral researcher, and second supervisor to another ScienceCampus PhD student, Thalia Prokopiou.

Joanna Moszczyńska is a postdoctoral researcher at DIMAS, based with Anne Brüske, working on Latin American-East European connections. Having spent six months with Mecila in Sao Paolo, she joined UR with funding through the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme.

Laura Niebling is a media scholar (Dr phil.) and has been the managing director of DIMAS since October 2024. Her work focuses on the history and theory of post-digital media and communication cultures.

Jacqueline Nießer completed her doctorate at the Graduate School of East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Regensburg. She has been working at the IOS since September 2024 for the Horizon Europe Twinning project RETLAMI-SEE - “Enhancing Capacities for Quality and Impactful Research on Transformations, Labour and Migration in Southeast-Europe”.

Timothy Nunan joined UR in 2022 from FU Berlin, where he was Head of the Volkswagen Freigeist Junior Research Group  on The Cold War's Clash of Civilizations at the Center for Global History. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard following a D.Phil at Oxford. He has pubilshed extensively on Cold War history, including studies on development in Afghanistan. His most recent book is Islamist Internationalism: Between the Cold War and Decolonization.

Edvin Pezo researches on Eastern and Southeastern European history. He is currently working on a book about Yugoslav domestic policy during the « era Ranković ».

Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Economics at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS, Regensburg). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute (CERGE-EI) and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (2012), a M.A. in Economics from CERGE-EI (2007), and a B.A. in Economic Theory from the Department of Economics, Ural State University, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2005). She was an external consultant for the World Bank and is a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. She is an Associate Editor of Comparative Southeast European Studies, the Journal of Population Economics, and the Journal of Happiness Studies. Her main research interests are environmental economics, quality of life, individual and regional inequalities, and economic and institutional development.

His research interests include a focus on German-Spanish connections and Latin America, especially Colombia.

Her research focuses on European-American connections in surveillance cultures, while she also has an interest in film, fashion, urban studies and cyberspace.

Sabine Rutar researches on World War II and Southeastern Europe, exploring themes including the Balkan Wars 1912/1913 and Yugoslavia during World War II.

Mélanie Sadozaï researches on history and politics in Central Asia, exploring themes including border regions and oral history. She is Co-Speaker of one of the LSC Research Networks Borders.

Her research interests include connections between Québec and Europe in the realm of culture, politics and history, with a particular focus on film, literature and art.

Thomas Steger has held the Chair of Business Administration, specializing in Leadership and Organization, at the University of Regensburg since 2011. He completed his Habilitation and PhD at the Chemnitz University of Technology. His research interests include corporate governance and employee-owned companies.

Natali Stegmann has been the coordinator for research on Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg and a professor at the chair of Southeast and Eastern Europe since 2009. Her research interests include the history of East-Central Europe, International Organisations, late socialism and gender and cultural history.

Her research includes a focus on urbanisation, urban and social transformation research (e. g. urban-rural relations, translocal practices, globalization, transformation towards sustainability) that applies actor- and practice-based approaches, critical participation and governance research in international comparison. She joined UR in 2020 as an acting professor, before joining the University full time, becoming the chairperson of DIMAS.

Tillmann Tegeler studied East and Southeast European History, Medieval History, and Slavic Studies in Munich and Moscow. In 2000, he graduated with an MA. In the same year, he started working at the library of the Institute for East European Studies (OEI) in Munich, and in 2004 also at the Institute for Southeast European Studies (SOI). With the relocation of the two institutes to Regensburg in 2007, he became head of the libraries. Since 2012, he has been head of the Library and Electronic Research Infrastructure Department.

Her research interests include performative practices in historical culture (doing history) including historical reenactment in the USA, Germany, and Poland.

Cindy Wittke graduated in international law and leads the Political Science Department at the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), where she is working on several projects, including an exploration of international law in the post-Soviet space. She received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin. She joined UR in April 2025, as a Professor of Normativity in International Politics at the Faculty of Law. She is a member of the Leibniz ScienceCampus Board of Directors.

A New In-security Architecture for Europe: Postwar Order and Non-nuclear Deterrence in Ukraine-Russia Relations

Maneuvering towards »The West«: U.S. Army-Bundeswehr joint War Games as Conduit for Western Identity Formation

Writing Abkhazia. Literature and Space in the (Post-)Soviet Realm

Notions of Home in the Far Right 'White Genocide' Narrative: A Multinational and Multilingual Approach to Contemporary Far Right Self-Representations in Europe and the Americas

The State and its Students: Hegemonic Structures, Subaltern Pedagogies, and Fractured Community in Bosnia and Chile

What Does it Mean to Be a Refugee? Sites of Knowledge Production and Their Asymmetrical Entanglements

Paul Vickers has been manager of the ScienceCampus since it was established in September 2019. He joined UR in 2018 as founding manager of the Centre for International and Transnational Area Studies (CITAS), which became DIMAS in 2022. He has degrees from University College London and the University of Glasgow, where he was awarded a PhD in 2014. A graduate in German and East European Studies, he has published articles and edited volumes in the fields of memory studies, heritage studies, social history, theatre studies and cultural studies.