Lecturers

Ph.D., University of Cambridge

Dr. Axel Bangert is a filmmaker and scholar whose academic work has focused on German cinema and television, European heritage film as well as transnational moving image production. In 2011, he was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, with a dissertation on images of the Nazi past in German film. This was followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College as well as a post-doctoral position at the University of Leeds as part of the project “Screening European Heritage.” His monograph The Nazi Past in Contemporary German Film: Viewing Experiences of Intimacy and Immersion appeared with Camden House in December 2014. As a filmmaker, Axel Bangert has experience in the areas of short film and music video.

axel.bangert@nyu.edu

M.A. in Teaching German as a Foreign Language, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
B.A. in German Literature and Culture, NYU

Kandice Chapman teaches classes for the German Language Program at NYU Berlin. Her academic interests include contrastive linguistics and the acquisition of German grammatical gender. In her free time, she enjoys listening to jazz and watching surrealist films. Kandice lives in the neighborhood Friedrichshain.

kandice.chapman@nyu.edu

Pierre Depaz is an educator, artist and programmer from France. He has taught at NYU and CUNY and is currently researching at the Film-Universität Babelsberg. He is interested in the multiple ways computers are attempting to represent and interface with human concepts and emotions. His academic research revolves around simulation, semantics and public organization through technological means, while his artistic practice includes digital games, computer simulations, interactive installations, networked performances and experimental web projects, and has been exhibited in NYC, Paris, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Brussels and Berlin.

pierre.depaz@nyu.edu

Peter Henry is WR Berkley Professor of Economics and Finance and Dean Emeritus at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Before coming to Stern, he was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He has written numerous peer-reviewed articles on international economics and finance, as well as a book on global economic policy, Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth (Basic Books). Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1969, Peter became a U.S. Citizen in 1986 and in 2016 he was honored as one of the Carnegie Foundation’s Great Immigrants. He lives in New York and Düsseldorf with his wife and four sons.

pbhenry@stern.nyu.edu

Friederike Hirz is a theatre director, who graduated with honors from ERNST BUSCH ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ARTS in Berlin. She assisted directors such as Frank Castorf and René Pollesch at VOLKSBÜHNE AM ROSA LUXEMBURG PLATZ BERLIN where she made her debut as a director in 2013. Her works move at the interface between political theory, choreography and theatre. By creating collective dramatic situations in the performative space, she aims to provoke the experience and change of social dynamics. Within her studies at the Academy of Dramartic Arts, Friederike was a guest student in the BA Dance and Choreography at the Danish National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen (Denmark) and at the Inter–University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT) where she completed two semesters of the MA Choreography program. She learned Applied Stanislavsky, Action Analysis and Five Point Analysis amongst others from Thomas Ostermeier. Since 2020 she has been a guest lecturer for the Stanislavski Method of Physical Action at NYU Berlin. Her methodological research circles around the question of how to apply Active Analysis to choreographic and experimental theater forms beyond the classical spoken theater. Besides her own productions, she frequently works as a dramaturg and writer for film and dance productions.

fh2236@nyu.edu

Guido Hesselmann has been teaching classes in Cognitive Neuroscience at NYU Berlin since 2018. After his Ph.D., he worked at the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit in France and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. From 2011–2018 he was the deputy group leader of the Visual Perception Lab at the Charité university hospital in Berlin. His current main research interests are the scientific study of consciousness, visual information processing in the human cortex, and computational modeling of perceptual decisions.

guido.hesselmann@nyu.edu

Heiko Hoffmann is a German journalist, curator, lecturer and consultant. He has been editor-in-chief of Groove magazine, an industry-leading electronic music magazine, for the past 18 years. He has written for international publications such as Pitchfork, Spin and Sound & Recording (Japan) and has hosted his own show Nightflight on German public radio station Fritz. Heiko has been a key-note speaker and panelist at conventions and festivals such as Sonar, MIDEM and ADE. He is a member of the board of advisers at Goethe institute and jury member of a number of international artist programs and teaches the History of Popular Music in Germany class at NYU Berlin.

heiko.hoffmann@nyu.edu

B.A. Art History, NYU 2000
M. Arch., Columbia University and Parsons The New School for Design, 2008
M.A. Art and Architectural History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2016
Ph. D. candidate, Architectural History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2016

Tarek Ibrahim received his BA in Art History from New York University in 2000 and his M Arch at Columbia University in the City of New York and Parsons The New School for Design in 2008. He moved to Berlin shortly thereafter, where he worked for several years as a practicing architect, most notably at the firm of Sauerbruch Hutton, before returning to academia in 2012. He received his Master’s in Art and Architectural history from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2016. Mr. Ibrahim is currently a research associate for the director general of the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace, which opened at the end of 2020. In addition, he is writing his PhD on the life and work of the German architect Johann Adam Rennebaum as a mirror of - and a window onto - the German expatriate community in Egypt around 1900. His thesis on the architecture of Shepheard’s Hotel of Cairo was published by the German Archaeological Institute in 2019.

ti201@nyu.edu

Christine Korte holds a Ph.D. in Communications and Culture from York University in Toronto.

Her dissertation focused on the Berliner Volksbühne theater under artistic director Frank Castorf in the period after German reunification. Her research interests include the workers' theater movement in Weimar era Berlin, the West Berlin post-punk scene, as well as the diversification initiatives underway in current Berlin theater. Christine is a passionate instructor devoted to bringing creativity into the undergraduate classroom. She has taught at the University of Toronto, York University, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. In addition to her scholarship, Christine is a dancer, performer, and synth-pop enthusiast.  
ck3633@nyu.edu

Marcela López is a geographer with an interdisciplinary background in urban and environmental studies. She is the founder of Contested Urban Waterscapes, a platform that provides space for dialog and practical action between scholars, social movements and public service providers to search for alternatives to reduce water inequalities. Her main fields of research include corporatization, water governance, urban infrastructures, citizenship; socio-ecological inequalities; urban political ecology; and environmental history.

ml8178@nyu.edu

Avant-garde German visual artist and composer Robert Lippok has been an influential player in Berlin’s thriving experimental music scene from a very early age. In 1983, he co-founded dissident punk band Ornament und Verbrechen with his brother Ronald, inspired by industrial trailblazers Throbbing Gristle. An open platform to explore jazz, electronic, and industrial concepts with like-minded collaborators of the East German underground persuasion, the group remained active until the mid-1990s, at which point it was overtaken by the brothers’ next and most well-known collaboration, the palindromic To Rococo Rot. A significant postrock/electronic outfit started by the Lippok brothers and Düsseldorf bass guitarist Stefan Schneider, the Krautrockish band ushered in a new generation of electronic actscommitted to acoustic investigations and improvisation of all stripes. Known for his expansive imagination, inventive rhythmic reflexes, and layers of fuzzy tones, Lippok’s solo work is just as wide-ranging – from funky, glitchy, twisted techno record Redsuperstructure for Raster-Noton (2011), to stage design for operas, gallery exhibitions, and notable collaborations with Italian harpist Beatrice Martini, Canadian percussionist Debashis Sinha or Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. In 2012 Robert Lippok joined the Institut für Raumexperimente founded by Olafur Eliason. In 2017 he started to teach Experiments in the Future of Production at the NYU Berlin.

lr2441@nyu.edu

Sven Ohl studied Psychology at Potsdam University and the University of California, Berkeley. During his Ph.D., he did his research on eye movements at Potsdam University, the Charité Berlin and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Since 2016, Sven pursues his research as temporary principal investigator at Humboldt University in Berlin. His main research topic is centered on the interplay between actions, perception, and visual memory. Sven has been teaching classes in Perception at NYU Berlin since Fall 2020.

sven.ohl@nyu.edu

Nikolai Preuschoff studied in Freiburg, Paris, Ann Arbor and Berlin, where he was born and also received his doctorate from the Freie Universität's Institute for German and Dutch Philology. His thesis is on W.G. Sebald’s readings of Walter Benjamin. Nikolai held teaching positions at the University of Michigan, University College Cork, the University of Erfurt, and recently as a Max Kade Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At NYU Berlin, he teaches German Studies.

np60@nyu.edu

Colin Self is a composer and choreographer based in New York and Berlin. He creates music, performance and environments for expanding consciousness, and for troubling binaries and boundaries of perception and communication. Self works with communities across disciplines and practices, using voices, bodies, and computers as tools to interface with biological and technological software. Self has presented work at The Dutch National Opera, HAU Berlin, The New Museum, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen NYC, Issue Project Room, among many international festivals and venues. He is a Rhizome Commission Grant recipient for his video project ClumpTV, and a Queer Art Mentorship Fellow. He served as an Eyebeam Resident in 2016 and a resident fellow at Etopia for FUGA in Zaragoza, Spain in 2018. He is a co-founder of the New York City queer performance collective Chez Deep and The Radical Diva Grant. He completed his MFA in Music & Sound at the Bard Milton-Avery Program in 2017. His second album, Siblings, was released in November 2018 and regarded as one of NPR's 50 albums of 2018 and Pitchfork's 50 experimental albums of 2018.

Ph.D. in Art History, University Tübingen; Habilitation, Technical University Dresden

Dr. habil. Paul Sigel studied Art History and German Literature at the University of Tübingen, where he received his Ph.D. in 1997 with a dissertation on the Architecture and Exhibition Displays of German Pavilions on World Fairs as Media of National Self-Representation, published in 2000 as a book (Exponiert. Deutsche Pavillons auf Weltausstellungen). In 2006, he edited the anthology Konstruktionen urbaner Identität together with Bruno Klein, and in 2009 he published studies on Baukultur. Spiegel gesellschaftlichen Wandels together with Werner Durth. In 2010, he received his Habilitation (professorial qualification) at the Philosophy Department of the Technical University Dresden. Paul Sigel has taught and worked on research projects at TU Dresden und TU Darmstadt, and he has worked as Guest Professor of Art History at the TU Dresden, of Urban History at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at TU Berlin, and of History and Culture of the Metropolis at the HafenCity University Hamburg.

His current research areas are History and Theory of Architecture from the 19th century to today, architecture and national representation, studies in the discourses on “Baukultur,” and studies of debates on urban identity. Berlin’s urban and architectural history is one of the main fields of his research and publications.

paul.sigel@nyu.edu

Dr. phil. in Political Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Felix specializes in the history of modern social and political thought. He was a visiting graduate student at the New School for Social Research (NYC), in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and at Tel Aviv University. After earning a doctorate from Humboldt-Universität, he did postdoctoral work at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently, he is a postdoc in modern and contemporary history at Freie Universität Berlin. At NYU Berlin, he teaches "The German Intellectual Tradition."

felixsteilen@nyu.edu

Matthias Strobel is the President of MusicTech Germany, the Federal Association for Music Technology in Germany, and founder of Wicked Artists, a booking agency for creative technology and new media artists. He is Germany’s main point of contact for music technology innovation and his network of entrepreneurs, industry executives, researchers, and his connections to (inter)national policy makers make him one of Europe’s renowned experts in that area.
Strobel works as a consultant, mentor, and independent manager to help accelerate avant-garde approaches from startups. Determined to further the innovative potential – and thus future success – of artists and entrepreneurs, he uses his experience and leverages his network to help create the music ecosystem of tomorrow. Strobel has given lectures at Berklee College of Music Valencia, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Popakademie Baden-Württemberg, Filmuniversität Babelsberg and Hamburg Music Business Summer School.
He curates conferences and facilitates events on innovation for the music ecosystem to foster knowledge transfer between visionaries from all intersections of the creative industries. His event series, the Berlin Music Tech Meetups, has grown into a community of more than 1,700 music tech enthusiasts. Strobel holds a B.A. in Business Communications from the University of Applied Sciences, HTW Berlin.

ms13864@nyu.edu

PhD History, Vanderbilt University

Carolyn Taratko is a historian of modern Germany and its transnational entanglements. She is particularly interested in histories of food, science, and natural resource management. Her first book project explores how Germans came to see the food supply as an object of governance between 1871 and 1945. She is currently a Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Erfurt and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

carolyn.taratko@nyu.edu