In cooperation with the President of Goethe University, the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften has appointed three university professors to be Goethe fellows for the summer semester 2021: the political scientist Gunther Hellmann, the Islamic theologian Ömer Özsoy and the sinologist Zhiyi Yang. The Goethe Fellowship Program will support the scholars in developing new research projects and applying for externally-funded research projects by providing them with the means and infrastructure to conduct preparatory workshops and conferences with partners from Germany and abroad, and by integrating them into the context of international exchange and research at the Forschungskolleg.

The new Goethe fellows and their projects

Gunther Hellmann has been a professor of political science with a focus on German and European foreign policy at the Institute of Political Science at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 1999. For many years, in addition to questions of the theory of international politics, he has been concerned with transatlantic relations, both in his publications and in his socio-political involvement with various foundations, institutes and associations. As a Goethe fellow, he will be involved in shaping the new research field »Democratic Vistas. Reflections on the Atlantic World«. His research will focus on international relations in a world that seems increasingly »ungovernable« and in particular on the connection between the crisis of multilateralism and the crisis of democratic forms of communalization..

Ömer Özsoy: »Reconstructing the Dynamics of the Emergence and Formation of Islam«

Ömer Özsoy has been a professor of Qur’anic exegesis at the Department of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2009, and is also the director of the university’s Institute for Studies in the Culture and Religion of Islam. In his historical-critical research that considers all historical sources from the time of Islam's origin, he explores the questions of how Islam came into being in the 7th century and how it has been perpetuated in subsequent centuries. In order to grasp this extremely complex history, Özsoy collaborates with experts from all over the world. He intends to use the infrastructure of the Forschungskolleg to intensify the exchange with his research partners by inviting them to Bad Homburg for fellowships and conferences.

Zhiyi Yang: »Sinophone Classicism. Contested Memory and Multifaced Chineseness in a Global Space«

Zhiyi Yang has been a professor of sinology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2012. Her recent research and publications have focused on medieval Chinese poetry and art (Dialectics of Spontaneity, Brill 2015) and on the life and work of Wang Jingwei, a politically active poet of the early 20th century (Poetry, History, Memory: Wang Jingwei and China's Wartime Collaboration, manuscript forthcoming). In her new project, she turns to the culture of the »Sinophone world« - looking not only at China, but also at countries in Asia that are influenced by China and at Chinese communities in the diaspora. She intends to investigate how Chinese traditions enter into the modern literature and culture of the Sinophone world and what function they assume in this global, increasingly digital space.

The Goethe Fellowship Program and the Goethe Fellows at the Forschungskolleg
The Goethe Fellowship Program was initiated in 2017 by the Board of Directors of the Forschungskolleg in cooperation with the Executive Board of Goethe University. The aim is to promote outstanding research in the humanities as well as the internationalisation of research at Goethe University and to contribute to the research profile of the university. To this end, professors at the university who are working on the development of a new research topic are appointed to the Forschungskolleg as Goethe Fellows for a period of up to four years.

Goethe fellows in the summer semester 2021
Sabine Andresen (education), Roland Borgards (literary studies), Beatrice Brunhöber (law), Christoph Burchard (law), Cornelia Ebert (linguistics), Gunther Hellmann (political science), Guido Friebel (economics), Ömer Özsoy (Islamic theology), Sandra Seubert (political science) und Zhiyi Yang (sinology).

Former Goethe fellows
Iwo Amelung (sinology), Daniela Grunow (sociology), Astrid Wallrabenstein (law) und Christian Wiese (Jewish philosophy of religion).