Paula Windecker publishes her doctoral dissertation

Paula Hanna Windecker, former Junior Fellow of the Gutenberg Academy Fellows Program, defended her thesis on 16.05.2025 (grade written performance: “magna cum laude” grade oral performance: “summa cum laude”). She has now published her doctoral dissertation entitled “Citizens’ Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Back on the Drawing Board. A New Conceptualization and Multidimensional Measurement Instrument to Revisit Citizens’ Perceptions of Electoral Integrity in Germany”, which can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-49289-2. We congratulate her warmly!

Junior Fellows return from study trip

This year’s study trip, which took place from October 6-9, 2025, took eleven Junior Fellows to Antwerp. The travel program was actively designed by all members in order to benefit as much as possible from the cultural offerings of the city and to enable exchange with other (junior) scientists on site. The full report on the 2025 study trip can be read here.

Anke Radinger publishes her doctoral dissertation

Anke Radinger, former Junior Fellow of the Gutenberg Academy Fellows Program, defended her thesis on 19.09.2023 (evaluation “magna cum laude”). She has now published her doctoral dissertation entitled “Researching Subtitling Processes. Methodological considerations for the investigation of AI-assisted subtitling workflows.” open access, available at https://www.frank-timme.de/de/programm/produkt/researching_subtitling_processes. We congratulate her warmly!

Associate Fellow and former Junior Fellows receive awards

At this year’s DIES ACADEMICUS, organized by the GCC, two former Junior Fellows and one Associate Fellow of the GAFP were honored for their outstanding achievements and contributions to science. In addition, our former Junior Fellow Theresa Mentrup (FB07: Institute of Cultural Anthropology and African Studies; GCC member) gave the congratulatory speech during the event. With humor and reminiscences of her doctoral period, she succeeded in giving a realistic portrayal of the everyday life of a junior researcher with children, with which many award winners could identify.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Franziska Fay, Associate Fellow (FB 07 – History and Cultural Studies | Institute for Cultural Anthropology and African Studies), received the Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose University Prize for her research on the interplay of sexualized violence, witnessing and social justice in the context of the (post)colonial relationship between Tanzania and Germany.

Dr. Jana Verena Gerhart, former Junior Fellow(FB 02: Chair of Management esp. Social Media), received the Alfred Teves Foundation Dissertation Award for her doctoral thesis entitled “A Darkness Shining in Brightness. The Role of Mixed Emotions in the Contexts of Consumer Psychology and Decision Making” the dissertation prize of the Alfred Teves Foundation.

Dr. Miriam Riedinger, former Junior Fellow(FB 05: Department of English and Linguistics) received the Research Promotion Award for her doctoral thesis entitled “Acoustics, phonetics, or phonology? A neurolinguistic perspective on neural and behavioral asymmetries in vowel processing” the Research Award of the Friends of Mainz University. Further information on the award winners and their projects can be found here. Congratulations to all our members!

Former Junior Fellow honored

For his essay “Macht und Autonomie. A theoretical framework for the analysis of the platformization of journalistic items”, Pascal Schneiders, former Junior Fellow and former Junior Speaker of the GAFP, was awarded the biennial DGPuK Theory Prize at the annual conference of the German Association for Communication Studies (DGPuK). The article was published in 2023 in the UFITA Archive for Media Law and Media Studies. The article systematically traces the power relations between platforms and news media based on theory and examines the consequences for the autonomy of news media. The theory prize is awarded to contributions that have made an extraordinary contribution to the development of theory in Communication Studies and have enriched the theory debate in our subject with original approaches.

Also honored at the annual conference was the article “Ich mach mir die Welt, wie sie mir gefällt. Opinion-forming relevance from a user perspective”. It received the prize for the best Communication Studies journal article (1st place). The article was published in 2024 in Medien & Kommunikations Studies (open access).

Review of the 28.04.2025

On April 28, 2025, the grand opening of the new Gutenberg Academy (GA) took place, at which the GAFP, like many other institutions for the grant of ECRs at JGU, was represented with a stand at an information fair. Some Junior Fellows came to visit and helped the office and the junior speakers with the application of the program. Thank you very much for this!

The official opening ceremony took place in the afternoon, with the cutting of a red volume. Prof. Dr. Stefanie Acquavella-Rauch was also present as our senior spokesperson and thus one of the representatives of the “subunits” (GSHS, Network NatLife and GAFP) of this newly established structure at JGU. Also Prof. Dr. Eva Rentschler, Senior Fellow of the GAFP and spokesperson of the Network NatLife. Further information under KOM and Press.

The day concluded with our annual GAFP induction ceremony, during which not only 11 new Junior Fellows but also 4 new Senior Fellows were inducted. We are very much looking forward to the coming years with them and the intensive interdisciplinary exchange. Further information can be found under COM and Press and Our Members.