PhD projects

By year

Overview of the PhD projects

"I can see what you feel". Reactionvideos auf Youtube. Repräsentationsstrategien in der Inszenierung unmittelbarer Emotion (Greta Konrad)

Auf Youtube finden sich vielzählige Videos, in denen Personen sich dabei filmen, wie sie ein Video anschauen. Diese Reactionvideos sollen hinsichtlich der Inszenierung von Emotionen verstanden werden. Projektnr.: G 403

"My Face" - Identity and emotional structures on social networking websites (André Hoever)

People choose information to discribe themselves on online network sites. It seems plausible to think that a person's emotional self-concept guides this choice. Project No. G 103

"Sensorial Thinking". Sergei Eisenstein’s Method as a Project Towards a New Order of Knowledge ( Elena Vogman)

The project aims to investigate the "sensorial thinking" in Sergej Eisenstein’s Method by means of a work-immanent analysis of his theory construction. Project No. G 412

"They are boring people" – Processing of affective prosody in alexithymic and non-alexithymic speakers (Anna Carlotta Welding)

Speech melody or intonation (prosody) is a fundamental part of the verbal communication of emotions. The project explores the production and the reception of affective prosody in so-called "emotionally blind" (alexithymic) individuals. Project No. G 402

Affective Economies. Languages of Emotion in Shakespeare (Kathrin Bethke)

This project analyses the influences of economic paradigms on the representation of the passions in early modern English drama. It mainly focuses on the concept of "esteem" and its ethical, economic and emotive implications. Project No. G 201

Affective calculations: Literary texts about economic speculation (Nina Peter)

Financial speculation is seen as non-emotional and abstract, but literary texts describe intense 'market emotions'. The project analyzes the relation between speculation and emotion in literature. Project No. G 408

An ethnography on the social emotion shame in sex education in school (Sarah Blumenthal)

The empirical study - a participatory observation of sex education in biology classes in four secondary school classes in Berlin, focuses on the dynamic of shame in communication processes. Project No. G 202

Angry Texts. The Language of Aggressive Emotions in 20th Century German Literature (Alfred Alexander Stumm)

How does literature convey linguistically expressed anger? What purpose does that serve and what do the differences mean? The analysis uncovers concepts of an emotion and its relation to semiotic and symbolic practices. Project No. G 211

Between Norm and Nature: Visual and written concepts of motherhood in classical Athens (Viktoria Räuchle)

The mother is a highly emotional subject combining a multitude of cultural concepts whilst at the same time assuming an almost archetypical role. Project No. G 312

Context Dependent Empathy: A differentiated Approach to Empathic Abilities in Borderline Personality Disorder (Annemarie Miano)

Project No. G 407

Das Selbst und die Welt in der Depression. Eine ethnographische Studie in der deutschen Gesellschaft (Vanessa Pia De Bock)

How do people suffering from severe depression experience the illness and how do they experience therapy? Which socio-cultural conditions of depression are prominent? Project No. G 401

Emotion and taboo. Incest in mediaeval narrative texts (Nora Hagemann)

Incest is something "you don't talk about" - incest is narrated. Emotions are constitutive elements of stories about incest that act as interfaces in the narrative syntagm. Project No. G 308

Emotion and écriture in Abe Kazushige's 90s Fiction (Maria Römer)

Project No. G 208

Emotion expression in non-human primate vocalisations (Carla Pritsch)

Great apes use, just like human beings, three modalities to convey emotional information: facial expressions, gestures and vocalisations. In research, the level of knowledge as well as the attention drawn to these three modalities shows significant inequalities. This project approaches the field of vocal communication of orangutans in emotionally arousing situations. Project No. G 409

Emotion in Transit. Exoticism in European Modern Dance exemplified by Indian movement motifs (Tessa Jahn)

Project No. G 104

Emotion perception in the multisensory brain (Sarah Jessen)

How do I know what you feel? Under normal circumstances, humans are quite successful at recognizing others’ emotions based on their behavior and to adapt their responses accordingly. This renders emotion recognition as a crucial prerequisite for efficient social interaction. Project No. G 105

Emotion, Performance and Death Ritual in Mani, Greece (Christos Varvantakis)

The aim of this project is to gain insight into the role of emotion and emotion expression in contemporary rural Greek death rituals. Project No. G 112

Emotional competence and language in children with Williams syndrome (Tanja Tagoe)

The research project investigates interactions between emotional, linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities in children with Williams syndrome, a rare disorder with unbalanced competences within emotions, language, cognition and social behavior. Project No. G 212

Emotional reactions to social exclusion (Lea Gutz)

The project focusses on the processing of and the emotional responses to social exclusion. Project No. G 307

Emotions at Work – Working on Emotions. Germany, 1920 - 1970 (Sabine Donauer)

This project investigates the relationship between capitalist and emotional practices in 20th century industrial labor. Project No. G 204

Emotions, calculations and social relations in investment banking (Markus Lange)

Financial markets are marked by a radical uncertainty. What are the influences of emotions, calculative practices and social embeddedness while investment bankers encounter this uncertainty? Project No. G 405

Evolutionary Psychopathology of Depression: a differentiation between different subtypes of low mood following different adverse life events (Eiko Fried)

This project aims to shed a light onto depression as one categorial construct from the perspective of evolutionary psychopathology. Project No. G 305

Feelings of guilt and cinematic expression (Matthias Grotkopp)

How do films try to evoke moral emotions such as guilt in their audience? How do they unfold the affective foundations of shared values and (his)stories, of identities and action tendencies? Project No. G 306

Figurations of anger. Revenge, retaliation and the cultural imaginary (Fabian Bernhardt)

When it comes to revenge, boiling rage and cold calculation often disturbingly go hand in hand. The project inquires the delicate entanglement of emotion and reason, justice and injustice, reality and the imaginary that constitutes our notion of revenge. Project No. G 302

Filmic Movement and the Emotion of the Audience: Lines of tradition in the affect poetics of New Hollywood (Hauke Lehmann)

Project No. G 107

Gender and aging effects on the recognition of emotional speech (Niloofar Keshtiari)

Emotional speech carries vital information of the speaker. But to what extent do female and male, young and middle-aged Iranians recognize these emotional cues in Farsi sentences? Project No. G 310

Investigating the Relationship between Sound Shape and Meaning in Poetry (Maria Kraxenberger)

Emotions are communicated and expressed in, as well as by, poetry. The dissertation project tries to demonstrate and classify the potential phonetic expression of emotions in poems. Project No. G 404

Korean and German children’s acquisition of an ‚internal state language’ and their development of social cognition and emotion concepts (Cora Kim)

Project No. G 106

Love in the work of Heidegger and Arendt (Tatjana Noemi Tömmel)

Project No. G 111

Modulation of emotion elicitation in film (Corinna Pehrs)

How do we reach to induce a first hand emotion, measure it valid and investigate empathy at the same point? Project No. G 206

Motion in Emotion: Cognitive Metaphors in Malay and Indonesian Lyric Poetry and Song Texts (Husna Jamal)

How do metaphors shape our emotion and cognition? Do Malay and Indonesian speakers conceptualize their emotion in terms of motion as hypothesized? To what extent can this conceptualization of emotion be seen as universal and what are its cultural-specific features? Project No. G 311

Moving Identities: Metamorphosis in contemporary German literature and beyond (Tara Beaney)

What are emotions – are they external threats, animal forces, semi-rational appraisals or free-floating intensities? This project investigates historically changing understandings of the ways in which emotions act upon or constitute the self. Project No. G 215

Multimodal communication in parent-infant interactions: A cross-species comparison of gibbons, chimpanzees and humans (Manuela Lembeck)

Based on the attachment theory, multimodal signal exchange in parent-infant interactions will be studied. Results in this cross-species comparison might give insight in the evolution of emotional expressions. Project No. G 406

Music, Emotions, and Self-Comprehension: An Enquiry Concerning the Nature and Value of Musical Expressivity (Stefan Zwinggi)

The dissertation project focuses on examining the nature and value of pure music’s emotional expressivity, linking current discussions on music’s expressivity as well as on the ontology and rationality of emotions in analytic philosophy. Project No. G 314

Network patterns in the social sharing of grief (Roman Ebel)

Social network analysis is used to identify patterns of social attributes that interface bereaved persons and their social environment in grief sharing. Project No. G 304

Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Emotional Experiencing: The Influence of Early Life Stress, Alexithymia and Depression (Sabine Aust)

Projektnr.: G 101

On the Significance of Feeling for Belief and Knowledge in the Late Writings of G.W.F. Hegel (Dorothea Katharina Ritter)

How do we know whether we really know something or whether we "merely" believe something? Must we consider belief and knowledge as strictly rational phenomena or do we have to recognize that feeling might play some significant role in them? How does certainty occur? Project No. G 207

Pain as Aesthetic Experience in Charles Baudelaire's Work (Christoph Groß)

This project aims to investigate the interest of nineteenth-century literature in pain in regard to the variety of its aesthetic, religious and anthropological implications. Project No. G 102

Pleasure of Pain in fin de siècle Vienna (Daniela Schönle)

Project No. G 110

Poetics of affect in musical theatre after 1945 (Lydia Rilling)

Project No. G 108

Reflections in a Cloudy Pond: Definition and Measurement of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Aline Vater)

Project No. G 214

Sensualism in Germany. The Constitution of Sensualistic Aesthetics from Meier to Lessing (Olga Katharina Schwarz)

Without sensualism, Kant’s aesthetics wouldn’t exist. But what is sensualism? The project examines the construction of sensualist aesthetics in the second third of the 18th century in Germany. Project No. G 410

Settling Emotions? The Indian Residential Schools Settlement and Algonquin Survivors in Canada (Anne-Marie Reynaud)

Emotions play an important role in all reconciliation processes. But cultures can have different ways of shaping and sharing their emotions. Project No. G 313

Sprachen des Gefühls bei Robert Musil (Rousbeh Djahangiri)

Project No. G 203

The Adam Smith Project. Reading the collected works of Adam Smith in the light of Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality (Bastian Ronge)

Project No. G 209

The Relationship of Self to Other: A Social Neuroscientific Using Narcissistic Individuals (Marjan Sharifi)

Project No. G 411

The joy of motoring: Lifestyles and emotional experience (Christa Bös)

The "joy of motoring" has been discredited in the discourse on shortage of mineral oil and global warming. The assumption that "the joy of motoring" is an intersubjectively unambiguous category, suggested by its common usage, is questioned. Project No. G 303

The moved beholder: Affect modelling and the atmospheric qualities of baroque sanctuaries (Dörte Wetzler)

Project No. G 113

The relevance of emotion for the acquisition of new words in children with normal language development and children with specific language impairment (Carmen Herzog)

The aim of this project is to investigate the impact of negative emotional prosody on the word learnig process in children with normal language development compared to children with specific language impairment at the age between 3;6 and 4;0. Project No. G 309

Vision and Affect: Altarpieces with embedded miraculous images in Italy 1510-1610 (Isabella Augart)

Project No. G 301