Research Fellows 2023

Vinit Agarwal is an artist, poet, translator and researcher. He graduated from the Critical Curatorial Cybernetic Research Practices (CCC-RP) programme at the Visual Arts Department of HEAD Genève in 2019. After completing his Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Rajasthan in 2008, he worked as a software engineer for eight years. Vinit Agarwal has written various performative theatre and poetry texts, including for the magazine The Dark Mountain and the online magazine Rosa Mercedes. He has also contributed to various research projects on internationalism in East German visual cultures and film material politics. From October 2019 to January 2021, he was an artistic-research associate in the research project "Decolonising Socialism. Entangled Internationalism", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the VanAbbe Museum in Eidhoven, BlaxTARLINES in Kumasi/Ghana and the cross-collection research at the SKD. Subsequently, Vinit Agarwal will curate a research-based exhibition in 2024 on behalf of the Research Department (SKD) in the series "Sequences: Contested Internationalisms" at the Albertinum, Dresden. 

Andrea-Vicky Amankwaa-Birago is a cultural scientist. She works as a freelance organisational consultant for diversity management and has worked for many years as an empowerment trainer in black, African and Afro-diasporic communities. She works as a research assistant in the field of museum management at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. She is the founder of the transnational alliance "Anton Wilhelm Amo Erbschaft". This is committed to the preservation of cultural heritage and the introduction of a decolonial culture of remembrance of Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first pedagogue, lawyer and philosopher of Ghanaian origin. Andrea-Vicky Amankwaa-Birago is a Research Fellow in the Research Department at the SKD in 2023 and is researching the Ashanti Prince Kwasi Boachi (1827-1904).

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic and lives in Kumasi, Ghana. He is a core member of the blaxTARLINES network. Ohene-Ayeh's work spans the fields of pedagogy, criticism, curating and art. He was one of the artistic advisors of the 59th Venice Biennale (International Art Exhibition 2022), under the artistic direction of Cecilia Alemani. Ohene-Ayeh is co-curator of the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography (2019-2020); Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei 'Dota') (2020-2021); TRANSFER(S), Ibrahim Mahama's site-specific installation commissioned by the Kunsthalle Osnabrück in Germany (2023); and the 35th edition of the Lima Biennale of Graphic Arts (2023). edition of the Ljubljana Graphics Biennale with Exit Frame Collective (2023). In 2024, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh will curate a research-based exhibition commissioned by the Research Department (SKD) in the series "Sequenzen: Entangled Internationalisms" at the Albertinum, Dresden, which follows on from the research project "Decolonising Socialism: Entangled Internationalism" by HEAD Genève, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the VanAbbe Museum in Eidhoven, BlaxTARLINES in Kumasi/Ghana and the cross-collection research at the SKD.

Zoé Samudzi is the Charles E. Scheidt Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She holds a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences. She is also a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC) at the University of Johannesburg.
Samudzi is an author and critic whose work has appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Bookforum, The New Inquiry, The Architectural Review, The New Republic and The Funambulist, among others. She is co-editor of Parapraxis Magazine, writes for Jewish Currents, and is co-author of As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation (AK Press). Samudzi is curating a research-based exhibition in 2024 on behalf of the Research Department (SKD) in the series "Sequences: Verfochtene Internationalismen" at the Albertinum, Dresden, which is based on the research project "Decolonising Socialism: Entangled Internationalism" by HEAD Genève, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the VanAbbe Museum in Eidhoven, BlaxTARLINES in Kumasi/Ghana and the cross-collection research at the SKD.

Bernd Scherer is a philosopher, author of numerous essays, publications and newspaper articles on the Anthropocene and Senior Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Geo-Anthropology in Jena. From 2006 to 2022, he was director of the House of World Cultures in Berlin. As a philosopher, Scherer focused the programme on examining the transformation processes in our societies, the post-colonial structures, the ecological and technological upheavals: initially in projects such as The Potosí Principle (2009-2010) and On the Art of Living (2010-2011) and from 2012 in the multi-year research projects The Anthropocene Project, 100 Years of Now and The New Alphabet, including the Dictionary of Now series of events (2015-2018). An important methodological approach of Scherer is the interweaving of art and science, politics and technology. He is the editor of the volumes Das Anthropozän - Zum Stand der Dinge (with Jürgen Renn, 2015), Wörterbuch der Gegenwart (with Stefan Aue and Olga Schubert, 2019) and Das Neue Alphabet (2021), and Der Angriff der Zeichen. Images of Thought and Patterns of Action of the Anthropocene (2022). Bernd Scherer is a Research Fellow of the Research Department at the SKD in 2023.