Doctoral students
Table of contents
Current PhD projects
Aurelia Rager
On the Move with the Camera: Photographs on Public Transportation in the GDR
The doctoral project is dedicated to photographs (featuring works by Ursula Arnold, Evelyn Richter, and York der Knoefel, among others) that were taken on public transportation in the GDR and depict (anonymous) passengers. The study focuses on the aesthetic forms of photographic appropriation as well as the tension between the typification and individualization of the pictorial subjects. Based on this, the negotiation of mobility and everyday social practice within the interstitial space of public transportation’s temporary public sphere is examined. In addition, the influence of state art and visual politics, as well as the regimes of visibility in the GDR, will be analyzed. The aim is to reflect on and contextualize a photographic subject in the GDR that has scarcely been investigated to date.
Aurelia Rager works as an assistant research curator for theUrsula Arnold und Evelyn Richter Archive of the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung at the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig.
Jasmin Höning
Representations of Humans in AI Art
The doctoral project aims to investigate representations of humans in AI art. The research work thus contributes to the analysis and categorization of artworks that use AI technologies to generate synthetic representations of humans and thereby reflect on current technological discourses inherent in the work. The selection of case studies focuses on questions of identity negotiations and realisms. The aim is a fruitful comparison that embeds the highly topical questions about the possibilities and risks of AI-generated images of people in an overall social context.
The doctorate is being written as part of the second project phase of the Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden Research Training Group.
Contact: jasmin_lea.hoening@tu-dresden.de
Further information about the person and the doctoral project can be found on the Schaufler Lab website.
Heidrun Mezger
(Post)colonial Provenances of Cultural Property from the Pays Dogon (Republic of Mali) in German and French Collections
The doctoral project reconstructs the (post)colonial provenances of cultural objects, in particular sacred sculptures from necropolises in the rock massif of Bandiagara (Pays Dogon), which entered German and French collections via the 'art market'. The aim is to (re)contextualize the cultural objects and shed light on the circumstances of their acquisition in collaboration with Malian researchers using methods of visual studies, art history, and cultural anthropology. At the same time, the project aims to make the (post)colonial framework conditions of provenance research itself visible and to develop approaches to to its decolonization.
Heidrun Mezger is a member of the Franco-German Doctoral College "Thinking Differences: Science, Public Spheres, Politics". Further information on the doctoral project can be found on its website.
In 2025, Heidrun Mezger is a Research Associate in the research project "On the provenance of ten cultural objects from the Pays Dogon (Republic of Mali) in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin" funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.
Tanja-Bianca Schmidt
Threatened Bodies – Videos of Police Violence and Migration on Social Media
The doctoral project examines the extent to which camera techniques, image editing tools, and the network character of social media have radically changed political image communication and are constantly producing new image aesthetics and strategies. With a focus on visual migration policies, the work examines exemplary images from European border regions such as Melilla, the Aegean, or the so-called "green border". The aim is to systematize the different perspectives on migration and borders based on the visual material and to understand the operative power of the various, sometimes contradictory images.
The doctoral thesis is being written as part of the DFG-funded project "Image Protests on Social Media".
Further information about the person and the doctoral project can be found on the website of the DFG project.
Completed PhD projects
Anja Degner
Woman as a political subject in the work of Käthe Kollwitz
The doctoral project explored the intersections between the artist Käthe Kollwitz and the first German women's movement, examining the extent to which the socio-historical backgrounds—shaped by social upheavals—can be related to the artist's work. The thesis focused particularly on those artworks that bring female perspectives to the fore. The dissertation combined a systematic investigation of Kollwitz's depictions of female figures with the categorization and analysis of her various visual strategies. The aim was to break down and revise the one-dimensional image of Kollwitz as the "Mother of the Nation" in order to anchor her and her work more firmly within the women's political and social discourses of her time. In doing so, Kollwitz was cast as a feminist artist and an active participant in the gender-political debates of her era, whose commitment to women's rights permeated her life on multiple levels.
The doctoral project was funded by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung and TU Dresden.
The dissertation was submitted in September 2025 and defended in May 2026 (overall grade: magna cum laude).
Michael Klipphahn-Karge
Invocations of the Present: AI and Magic in Art
This doctoral project explores the thesis that a discursive entanglement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and magic can be demonstrated in the art of reflexive modernism. To this end, the thesis examines three artistic positions from the early 21st century as case studies. The works of Agnieszka Polska (The Demon’s Brain, 2018), Jordan Wolfson (Female Figure, 2014), and Hito Steyerl (This Is the Future and Power Plants, 2019) treat AI as a narrative, an artistic strategy, and a technical element or material of artistic practice. In doing so, they mediate contemporary technological discourses and draw upon a new, more open concept of magic.
The doctorate was completed within the framework of the first project phase of the Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden Research Training Group.
The dissertation was submitted in December 2023 and defended in May 2024 (overall grade: summa cum laude).
Further information about the person and the doctoral project can be found on the Schaufler Lab.