The Scientists

Axel Michaels

Axel Michaels has directed Sub-project A10 "Ontological Modelling in the Research of Ritual Structures" since 2009. In addition he has been Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg since 1996, and simultaneously spokesman for the Collaborative Research Centre 619 "Ritual Dynamics" since 2002. After his doctorate, Axel Michaels assumed the directorship in the early 1980s of the Nepal Research Centre in Kathmandu/Nepal. From 1999 till 2002 he was Managing Director of the South Asia Institute.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Johannes Wienand

Johannes Wienand is research fellow in Sub-project B10 "Political Rituals in Late Antiquity (C 4th.-6th.)". From 2006 bis 2009 he was research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre 485 "Norm and Symbol" and lecturer at the University of Constance. This was followed by a sabbatical at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Among his main fields of research are monarchy in late antiquity, Roman military history, and panegyrics to dominion.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Marco Mattheis

Marco Mattheis studied Ancient History, Latin and Greek at the Universities of Heidelberg, Cambridge, Rome and Paris. Since 2009 he has been a research fellow in Sub-project B10 "Political Ritual in Late Antiquity (C 4th.-6th..)". Among his main research interests are urban rituals in late antiquity (his dissertation topic) and festival culture in the same period.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Andreas Büttner

Andreas Büttner has been a research fellow since 2007 in Sub-project B8 "The Staging of the Political Decision-Making Process in the Middle Ages". He studied Mediaeval and Recent History, Auxiliary Historical Sciences and Comparative Religion at the University of Heidelberg and the Università degli Studi di Catania. Among his main lines of research are coronation rituals in late mediaeval Europe. In the autumn of 2011 his dissertation "The Way to the Crown. Rituals of the Elevation of the Monarch in Late-Medieval Empires" will be published at Jan Thorbecke publishing house.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Christiane Brosius

Christiane Brosius received the Professorship of Visual and Media Anthropology in 2009 as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at the University of Heidelberg. She is co-founder of the image gallery Tasveer Ghar, a trans-national network that i constructing a digital database on popular culture in South Asia, and runs the online magazine South Asian Visual Culture Series. Christiane Brosius’s main research interests include urban anthropology and youth culture, globalisation, and migration and Hindu nationalism.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Hanna Liss

Hanna Liss has directed Sub-project B11 "Theory and Practice of Ritual Purity in Mediaeval Ashkenazi Judaism - Ritual Purity in Medieval Ashkenaz" since 2009. In 2002 she completed her post-doc thesis in Jewish Studies at the Department of Art, Oriental and Classical Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. This was followed by research sabbaticals in Lexington und Cambridge. From 2005 to 2006 she was Prorector of the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg. Among her major research interests are mediaeval Jewish Bible literature and commentaries in Western Europe (1000-1300), rules of ritual purity, priesterly literatures in the Hebrew Bible, and the exegesis of the Bible and literary theory.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Nadja Miczek

Nadja Miczek worked up till 2010 in Sub-project C2 "Between Online-Religion and Religion Online. Constellations for Ritual Transfer in the Medium of the Internet". Within this framework she completed her dissertation project, which deals explicitly with the construction of religiosity and rituals in recent religious clusters in Germany, with special attention to the role of the Internet. She has furthermore researched "Rituals in Virtual Worlds. Transfer and Transformation of Ritual Performance" as part of the sub-project, focusing on the ritual topography of the Christian cluster found particularly in “Second Life”. Since the end of 2010 she has been employed as chief assistant at the University of Lucerne.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Karin Polit

Karin Polit has been a research fellow at SFB 19 since 2006 and since 2009 active in Sub-project A4 "Agency and Territorial Rituals in India - Media, Rituals and Youth Culture in New Delhi" at the University of Heidelberg, where she has worked as a lecturer since 2004. Karin Polit is a member of the board of the Collaborative Research Centre 619 "Ritual Dynamics" at the University of Heidelberg and member of the "Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies".

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de

Joanna Ayaita

Joanna Ayaita has worked since 2010 as part of the Sub-project B10, "Political Rituals in Late Antiquity (4th-6th century)" on her doctoral thesis about "Ritual communication between the Emperor and the People in Constantinople during the 5th and 6th century". Prior to that she studied History, Spanish and Ancient Greek at the Justus Liebig University, Gießen, where she wrote her dissertation on The Life of St Daniel the Stylite.

Full CV (in German):
www.ritualdynamik.de