Senior Fellows

Jörg Dünne (Maîtrise ès lettres Paris 1994/Dr. phil. Kiel 2000/Habilitation in Romance Philology Munich 2008) became Professor of Romance Literatures with a focus on Spanish-language literatures at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2017. His research focuses on literary and cultural studies of space, literature and cultural techniques, spectacularity and catastrophism, and literatures in the Anthropocene. He is currently pursuing a book project on aquatic spaces in Argentine literature and cinema, in addition to his project on street dogs in Latin America as part of his Mecila Fellowship in 2022.

Project: Interspecific Convivialities: Street Dogs in Latin America

Abstract:
Street dogs are indicators of zones of inequality in urban space in times of globalisation. This project studies forms of interaction between dogs and human beings as processes of open coexistence between the two species that extend beyond the delimited space of the home and zones of crisis and conflict in urban space.

The interaction of human beings and dogs in Latin America will be studied as a basic “convivial configuration” and can be followed in different historical regimes of indigenous human-animal relationships by examining the role of dogs in colonial history to the omnipresent phenomenon of street dogs in the present. Literature and film in the twentieth century can be understood as media in which these configurations can be observed and examined for their changing means, in particular when considering the associated processes of social inclusion and exclusion. The focus lies, first, on fictional texts, studying in particular the close affinity of the picaresque to convivial configurations between humans and dogs. Second, documentary films and nonfictional literary texts will be used to explore the ecologies of the urban field and revealing affinities to anthropological “multispecies ethnography”.

Main Discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:

• Kosmogramme. Geohistorische Skalierungen romanischer Literaturen. Berlin: August Verlag 2019.

• Zukunft, gefaltet. Choreographien des Als-Ob (mit Martina Bengert und Max Walther). Weimar: nocturne 2021.

• Cultural Techniques. Assembling Spaces, Texts & Collectives (mit Kathrin Fehringer, Kristina Kuhn und Wolfgang Struck). Berlin: De Gruyter 2020.

• “Escribiendo el tiempo profundo. Ficciones fundacionales y el Antropoceno“. In: Orbis Tertius 25/31 (2020).

• „Der Kommensalismus der quiltros. Lateinamerikanische Hunde-Geschichten“. In: Daniel Graziadei/Federico Italiano/Christopher F. Laferl/Andrea Sommer-Mathis (Hg.): Mythos – Paradies – Translation. Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Bielefeld: Transcript 2018, 333-344.

Daniela Vicherat Mattar is a sociologist working as Associate Professor at Leiden University College, The Hague (LUC), where she holds the portfolio on interdisciplinarity. Trained at the interface of social, urban and political thought, her research and teaching interests include the fields of cities, citizenship and care. In particular, she is interested in how urban forms (for example squares, walls, street art, museums, food markets and cooperatives) translate large socio-political processes like the struggles for democracy, identity politics in divided societies, the processes of border making, feminists’ demands, the recognition and reparation of colonial legacies, and the emergence of what can be defined as an environmental consciousness. Her research has focused both on Europe and Latin America.

Project: The Union of Disunion: Spatialising the Inequality-Conviviality Nexus

Abstract:

While scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities has extensively highlighted the shortcomings of liberal representative democracies, there is still a lack of adequate theorisation of democracy as a lived experience. My work aims to make three contributions to this theorisation: Firstly, I examine the social interactions that sustain the imaginaries of democracy in daily life (notions of access, connection, use, exchange, expression, dignity and respect) in Chile and Spain. I then go on to show how the multifaceted nature of public spaces rarely coincides neatly with public/private property regimes. Finally, I move beyond theorisations that either romanticise public spaces as sites of encounter or demonise them as sites of violence that threaten public life. To do this, I examine the case of Plaza Baquedano/Italia/Dignidad in Santiago (Chile), in particular the street art surrounding the square after 18 October 2019, a case that illustrates how multiple convivial configurations in the square have opened up the possibility to transform regimes of conviviality in the country. These three contributions can advance the theorising of public spaces as sites that organise the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the daily life of democratic societies.

Main Discipline: Sociology

Selected publications:

• “Public space as border space: Social contention and street art in Santiago post 18/O”. FRAME Journal of Literary Studies. 2020, 33(1): 31-47. DOI.

• “Dónde está la democracia?” in D. Quiroga and J. Pastene (Eds) Alienigenas: El Estallido Social en los Muros. Ocho Libros, 2020.

• “Europe, the familiar stranger” in J. de Jong, M. Neuman, S. Neuman-Stanivukovic and M. (Eds.) European Studies and Europe: Twenty years of Euroculure. Universitatsverlag Gottingen, 2019.

• “Food and Consumers” (with B. Walsh and D. Ehrhardt) in P. Behrens, T. Bosker and D. Ehrhardt (Eds.) Food and Sustainability. OUP, 2019.

• “Mapuche Citizenship. Francisca Linconao’s struggle to imagine and define citizenship beyond the state”, in Historica 3, 2017, pages: 20-24. DOI.

• “Speaking walls: contentious memories in Belfast’s murals” in S. Awad and B. Wagoner (Eds.) Aesthetics of Resistance. On multiple Forms of Graffiti. Palgrave, 2017.