Second cohort of RTG Self started › view all

21.03.2023

Eight Regular PhD and two Affiliated PhD Fellows started their work at BIGSSS


In March, BIGSSS welcomed eight Regular PhD Fellows within the Research Training Group Self and two Affiliated PhD Fellows. For the next years they will profit from BIGSSS’ structured PhD education and a close supervision of our faculty. At the beginning of the program, the new fellows were guided by our O-week into PhD and everyday life at BIGSSS with various in-person, introductory workshops.

NewPhDcohort03/2023(From left to right: Alice Cimenti, Daouyuan Ji, Aya Alwais, Mastewal Bitew, Sophia Landzettel, Kabir Gosh, Borbala Gescovics) 

Alice Cimenti, Aya Alwais, Borbala Greskovics, Hayl, Al-Salehi, Kabir Gosh, Mastewal Bitew, Rida Bano and Sophia Landzettel will pursue their individual research projects DFG funded Research Training Group (RTG) “Social Dynamics of the Self” (Self). The RTG SELF focuses on investigating the interactions between individuals and their social environment, providing a platform for early-career researchers from various social science disciplines to study the self’s embeddedness in diverse social systems, ranging in complexity and dynamically changing over time. Within this framework the new fellows will pursue their research projects:

  • Alice will work on identity formation of immigrant teenage girls,
  • Aya will do research on intergenerational cultural and ethnic identity development among Syrian Refugees and Syrian-Germans,
  • Borbala plans investigate the effects of socio-cultural differences and work-life balance on fertility,
  • Hayl is interested in the impact of self-efficacy on the perception of stress among Migrants,
  • Kabir’s PhD project is on conflicts in changing honor codes,
  • Mastewal will focus on integration of migrant and identify claiming,
  • Rida’s dissertation will be on honor cultures and subjective wellbeing of migrants, and
  • Sophia is interested in the relation of individualization in modern welfare states and social morality.

Nelson Sindze Wembe and Daoyuan Ji started their PhDs at BIGSSS as Affiliated Fellows. Nelson is a doctoral candidate in the interdisciplinary and collaborative research platform “Worlds of Contraction” where he is supervised among other by BIGSSS faculty member Martin Nonhoff. His Phd project on “Longing and belonging in Black African diasporic literatures” fits well with research done in the RTG Self. Daouyuan is a research associate of BIGSSS faculty member Tobias ten Brink at Constructor University. His PhD projects on social policy dynamics and inequality in large emerging economies speaks well to various research project of the CRC1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" at University of Bremen which is closely connected with BIGSSS.

The cohort is one of the most diverse cohorts ever at BIGSSS with ten fellows from ten different countries (Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, India, China, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Italy, Hungary, and Germany). 50 percent of the new fellows are female.  

We are curious to see how the projects of our new PhD Fellows will develop and are very much looking forward to next autumn's proposal defenses.