Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Aktuelle Gastwissenschaftler/innen

Dr. Bindu Bhadana

AB3D67E1-A6D9-4AA9-B02A-F008DEE62A5F.jpgDr. Bindu Bhadana is an independent scholar and Visiting Faculty at Anant National University in Ahmedabad. She has a PhD in Transcultural Studies from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Following her Master of Arts in Medieval Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi with a course in Journalism and Mass Communications, she has been working extensively within the field of arts and culture for the past 30 years. Her PhD thesis  titled Postnational Perceptions in Contemporary Art has been published in Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing within the series on Media and Cultural Studies edited by Professor Nadja-Christina Schneider in June 2023.

 

 

Forthcoming Post-Doctoral Research Project

Queery-ing the aesthetics of art in the city

Drawing from an understanding that street art has acquired a semiotic form of meaning-making in socio-political contexts (Goncalves & Milani 2022), this post-doctoral research project adopts a queer lens to examine the normative ‘straight’ and ‘actively produced’ (Binnie 1995) egalitarian space of the city street. How do queer aesthetic interventions play out on contested sites in the urban environment? The project examines some intersectional examples from street art that challenge social inequalities and conditions in subversive ways in the largely unauthorized, peripheral ‘non-places’ (Auge 1992) of the city streets, for example, the pillars below bridges, utility electrical boxes and trash cans, as transgressive semiotic sites for expressing alternative, excluded cultures.  From acts of erasure, bombing and buffing, to real-time synchronous conversations enabled by digital engagements with Twitter and Instagram to Tumblr, it engages with the inherent ‘power-geometry’ (Massey 1993) in mainstream locations (Los Angeles, Berlin) and in lesser-known locations from the Global South to examine the growing visibility of a queer counterculture and its commodification and the role played by media platforms in enabling/regulating these processes.


 

Dr. Kaustav Padmapati

kaustav.pngDr. Kaustav Padmati is currently working as Assistant Professor (Senior Scale) at School of Modern Media, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun. Kaustav is also a Cross Cultural Fellow 2023 at Gender and Media Studies for the South Asian Region, Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He has nearly 12 years of experience in the areas of teaching and research, international relations projects, media, public policy, content writing and project coordination. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship and worked from August’11 to May’12 at Center for Asian Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington DC, USA as Visiting Fulbright Research Scholar and Adjunct Faculty. He completed his Ph.D from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2021. He has published widely on international relations specifically on India- US Relations, Taiwan, Look East Policy, etc. and gender and queer identities. His research areas include China, the United States, Taiwan, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, ASEAN, International Relations, gender, and queer sexuality. His upcoming edited volume “Queer Voices from the Periphery: A Collection of Perspectives from Northeast India” is a humble attempt to bring the voices from academia and members of the queer community from Northeast part of India to put into a vantage point the challenges and struggles faced by the members of the community.

 


Dr. Nagehan Uskan 

Nagehan Uskan studierte Film an der Universität Bologna und Soziologie an der Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Universität. Sie promovierte zum Thema aktivistisches Dokumentarkino in der Türkei und war Postdoktorandin an der Universität Freiburg in der Schweiz, wo sie über Migration und visuelle Darstellung forschte. Ihre Arbeiten sind Video- und Dokumentarfilme, worin Bild und Selbstdarstellung als Form von Aktivismus verstanden werden. Sie lebt auf der Insel Lesbos in Griechenland und produziert kollektive Videos mit selbstorganisierten migrantischen Kollektiven. Sie arbeitet auch als Filmprogrammiererin für verschiedene Institutionen und Feste.

Im Rahmen des RePLITO Visiting Research Fellowship Programm an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und in Kollaboration mit der Off-University lehrt Nagehan Uskan im Wintersemester 2022/23 am Bereich für Gender- and Mediastudies for the South Asian Region das zeitgenössische Filmemachen im Exil.