PhD-Scholars

Nihan Duran

Research Interests: Gender Studies, (Forced) Migration Studies, Intersectionality, Labour Market and Social Policies

Current Project: Chances, Choices and Strategies of Refugee Women in the Labour Market in Germany: An Intersectional Approach

Nihan Duran is awarded the Diploma of the International Baccalaureate (IB), at the American Collegiate Institute, Izmir. She holds a dual bachelor's degree in International Relations (Anadolu University), and American Culture and Literature, along with a minor degree in German Translation and Interpretation (Ege University). She received her M.A. degree in the International Relations departement at Istanbul Bilgi University with her thesis, Living in 'the State of Exception:' Experiences of Syrian Refugees in Berlin (2019). She has also visited Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) as an exchange student. Her research article titled "Dual Discrimination of Syrian Refugee Women in the Labour Markets in Europe and Turkey: Identifying the Challenges" wins the prize at the competition organized by the Jean Monnet Chair at the European Institute of Istanbul Bilgi University and is published by the Journal of Social Policy Conferences in December 2018. She currently works on her doctoral research project as scholar of the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung at the Doctoral College on Intersectionality. 

Guelten Gizem Fesli

Research Interests:  Industrial Relations; Comparative Employment Relations; Labor Unions, Social Policy; Work and Transnational Migration; Intersectionality; Qualitative Research.

Geographical Area: Germany and USA

Current Project: Labor Union Organizing Strategies of Transnational Care Workers in Germany and the USA

Gülten Gizem Fesli (she/her) is a PhD candidate who studied at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and San Diego State University (SDSU). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Teaching (English, Political Science, Pedagogy), and a Master’s degree in Sociology from FAU.
Advised by Prof. Dr. Ingrid Artus in her current PhD project, she takes a migrant-centered approach to examine strategies employed by trade unions in organizing transnational domestic care workers in Germany and the USA, spanning from the late 20th century to the present. Through expert and narrative interviews with trade unionists, transnational domestic care workers, and civil society actors, she pays specific attention to power resources as well as well as race, class, and gender using intersectionality as a conceptual framework. The objective is to explore and compare the unionization of transnational care workers in both welfare states, and to draw conclusions from successful American organizing strategies for an intersectional approach to organizing migrant care workers in Germany.
She was awarded an Exposé stipend for academic excellence by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation, that is currently fully funding the research project. Additionally, the PhD fellow is chair of the Trade Union Education and Science (GEW) Nuremberg.

Further Information: Academic CV

Michel Jungwirth

Research Interests:  Anti-oppression, Solidarity, Social movement learning, popular education, Organizing

Aktuelles Projekt: Social movement learning spaces

I studied Political Science at the University of Vienna, specializing in migration and antiracist labor organizing. In my current research project, I aim to explore how social movements, particularly intentional movement-built learning spaces (social movement schools), generate knowledge, practices, curricula, and pedagogies. Specifically, I will examine practices and spaces that focus on issues of intersectional organizing and anti-oppression, thereby enhancing capacities of activists and movements to foster intersectional solidarities. Case studies will encompass social movement learning spaces and initiatives in North America and Europe.

Louisa Kamrath

Research Interests: Intersectionality, Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Material Feminism, Class Discrimination, Embodied Cognition, Social Theory, Social Justice

Current Project:  Berlin childhood around two thousand. Conceptionalizing a theory of intersectional embodiment from the narratives of Berlin mothers in precarity.

My doctoral project is intended to provide a framework for the idea of an embodied narrative within an empirically supported theoretical work. In doing so, the research perspectives of narrativity and embodied cognition will be combined to form a theory of embodied narrative. The guiding question asks for conditions and limitations of agency within intersectional possibilities.

On the basis of episodic interviews with mothers in Berlin who organize their lifes under precarious conditions in work and care, the intersectional determinism in thought and action is to be thematised. In equal measure the subversive potential of intersectional knowledge is to be made visible. The aim of the work is to expand the discourse on intersectionality and social inequality including the concept of cognitive embodiment.

Further Information: Academic CV

Ruth Martini

Research Interests: Intersectionality, collective organizing, sexuality, sex work, discrimination.

Current Project: Sex workers in trade unions and professional associations. An intersectional multilevel analysis.

This research project examines the social positioning of politically active sex workers in the context of complex social relations of domination and the significance of their political activism in terms of an expanded capacity to act. The aim is to determine to what extent collective organizing can contribute to overcoming intersectional relations of domination and improving the living conditions of sex workers.

Jody Metcalfe

Research Interests: Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, Cultural Identity, Theories of Belonging, Whiteness, Racism, Racialisation, Identity Construction, Mixed-Race Identity, Post-colonialism, African Feminism, Decolonisation.

Geographical Area: South Africa

Current Project: Representations of Mixed-Race Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa Literature

This research project seeks to unpack the ways in which mixed-race characters are represented in post-apartheid literature. Through a lens of intersectionality and critical race theory, I analyse five South African novels written within and based on the post-apartheid context. My research also considers the impact of settler colonialism and the legacies of apartheid, white supremacy, sexualisation and racialisation, systems of heteropatriarchy, and post-apartheid nationalist ideology. The three analysis chapters are organised into three spheres of intersectionality, namely, personal, social and political. It specifically locates the representation of these mixed-race characters in the narrative world within the historical legacies of processes of racialisation in the post-apartheid setting. By using an intersectional approach, my research seeks to enhance debates around the experiences of first-generation mixed-race South Africans, who construct their identity within the post-apartheid space through their representation in the narrative world, and more specifically, how structures of power like white heteropatriarchy are reproduced in the narrative world as well.

Further Information: Academic CV

Tarek Shukrallah

Research Interests: Intersectionality, class politics and materialism, post- and decolonial studies, queer of Color critique, critical archive studies, queer/sexuality studies

Current Project:

Tarek Shukrallah (they/them) is a political and social scientist focusing on intersectionality studies, class politics and materialism, post- and decolonial studies, queer of Color critique, critical archive studies, and queer/sexuality studies. In their PhD research, Shukrallah is working with non-heteronormative emancipatory social movements in the Maghreb region, centering activist agencies. Since 2021 they are working on an oral history and archival project centering queer movement histories of Black people and People of Color in Germany. In cooperation with Schwules Museum Berlin and the project “VerSa – Versammeln antirassistischer Kämpfe”, Shukrallah is editing a publication centering the voices of queer activists and artists of Color in Germany. For their PhD project, they hold a scholarship of excellence by the labor unions’ Hans-Böckler-Foundation since January 2023. Tarek Shukrallah is active as a community organizer, political educator and facilitator and writes for various media platforms.

Further Information: Academic CV

Davide Torrente

Research Interests: Bildung und Subjektivation in der Migrationsgesellschaft; Kritische (Flucht-)Migrations- und Rassismusforschung; Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis von Intersektionalität; Intersektionale Männlich*keitsforschung; Intersektionale Sozialraumforschung; Intersektional-Feministische Standpunkttheorien und Epistemologien; Transgenerationalität und Childismus; Rassismuskritische Psychoanalytische Pädagogik; Multidirektionale Erinnerung und plurales Gedenken; Pädagogik im Spannungsverhältnis von Postkolonialität und Post-Shoah.

Current Project: Surviving Space. Pädagogische Annäherungen an Bildung und Subjektivation von Jungen* und Männern* mit intersektionalen Rassismuserfahrungen in Sozialräumen der Migrationsgesellschaft.

Davide Torrente (er/ihm) ist Pädagoge sowie Bildungs- und Sozialwissenschaftler und hat in unterschiedlichen Projekten zur Intersektionalität von Bildungsprozessen an den Schnittstellen von Rassismen, Migration, Klassismus und Sexismus geforscht. Im Fokus seiner Arbeit stehen die wechselseitige Verwobenheit von Subjekt und Gesellschaft unter (post)migrantischen und (post)kolonialen Bedingungen sowie die Möglichkeiten einer emanzipativen, widerständigen und selbstermächtigenden Irritation hegemonialer Machtstrukturen als Gelingensbedingung von Bildung und als Ressource marginalisierter Bildungssubjekte. Besondere Bedeutung hat für ihn die Arbeit an Räumen und Strukturen der Wertschätzung postmigrantischer und anti- sowie dekolonialer Wissensproduktion in unterschiedlichen Bereichen von Wissenschaft und Kulturarbeit. Sein Promotionsvorhaben ist seit Februar 2023 von der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung gefördert.

Further Information: Academic CV