Princeton University - The Graduate School

Till Breyer is an exchange student at the department of German in the academic year 2012-2013, and a doctoral candidate at the Institute for German Literature at the HU Berlin, where he is member of the PhD-Net, Das Wissen der Literatur“. After finishing his studies of Literature, Philosophy and History at the University of Regensburg (Germany) in 2009, he has worked as a lecturer at the University of Oradea (Romania). His dissertation explores the relation of literature and economy, describing the intersection of modern economics, psychic economies, and novel poetics between 1870 and the 1930s.

Matthew Chan is a a visiting student in the Department of History and holds the William Alexander Fleet Fellowship. He studied previously at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he obtained a BA (2010) and MSt (2011) in History. His research focuses primarily on the history of cultural, religious and intellectual developments in France in the mid-twentieth century; his Master's thesis discussed Catholic Radicalism during the May '68 period. He is more generally concerned with the history of critical theory, and is also interested in aspects of medieval history (particularly saints and their representations) and the history of East Asia.

He looks forward to using his time at Princeton preparing for his doctoral research on antipsychiatry on Europe's extreme left, with a particular focus on Deleuze, Guattari, and the La Borde clinic, and also hopes to explore new fields offered by courses in other departments. In his spare time, Matthew also enjoys cricket, cinema and quizzing.
 

I am a visiting graduate student from Sciences Po, Paris and I am affiliated with the Politics Department here at Princeton. I hold a Masters in Political Sociology from Sciences Po where I am now pursuing my Ph.D. in Political Science. My dissertation focuses on the evolution and the structure of public opinion towards the role of government, welfare, and inequalities in the United States and in France. In my work, I look at the ways in which income and partisanship shape citizens’ attitudes towards redistribution as well as their perceptions of government waste, and how this can be related to electoral outcomes. 

I attended Princeton in 2010-2011 as a Fulbright Scholar, and I am glad to be back. In my spare time, you might see me cooking, (Greek) dancing, or singing French oldies with friends.
 

I am a Visiting Student from the École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm) in Paris. In Paris I got a Master's Degree in Political Philosophy - the subject of my thesis being : "Theology and technology in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan" (under the supervision of Prof. Kervegan, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
 
In Princeton, I am a Procter Fellow enlisted in the Politics Department. I also have connections with the Philosophy Department.

My main philosophical interests are Metaphysics, Political Ontology and Legal Philosophy. I am currently working on contemporary interpretations of Machiavelli (Althusser and Gramsci mainly) but I am also interested in contemporary French theory (Lacan, Althusser, Foucault), contemporary Marxism and theories of Republicanism. When I am not reading political philosophy, I enjoy writing fictions, doing some acting and travelling all around the world.
 

I am a visiting graduate student from the University of Konstanz in Germany, where I previously earned a B.A. in Political Science and Public Administration. I am attending Princeton University on a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship during the 2012-2013 academic year as part of the Department of Politics. Prior to coming to Princeton, I gained work experience in political consulting, as a research assistant and as an intern to a U.S. Congressman. My research interests include comparative bureaucracy and executive politics in OECD countries.

I am a Visiting Fellow from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (rue d'Ulm), and I was granted the Procter Fellowship by Princeton University. I have passed the agrégation of philosophy last year, after a master degree in phenomenology (Paris I - Panthéon Sorbonne University). I am currently in the Philosophy Department, where I am working on some personal research and on a subject for my PhD. I am interested in a lot of topics, but especially in ethics and metaethics, and in the moral and metaphysical question of egoism. I expect this year in Princeton to enable me to discover the contemporary American research on those issues. I also want to find time to read and to write a lot, to meet some people and researchers, and since I also directed films, I wish I could make one this year.

I am a visiting graduate student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and I was granted the Princeton/DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship. I studied at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, where I obtained a Bachelor’s Degree (B.Sc.) in Mechanical and Process Engineering in 2012. Since 2009 I have been in the engineering scholarship program of Lufthansa Technik AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I worked in the Systems Engineering Department for the Airbus long haul fleet and wrote my bachelor thesis in the Innovations Department, which dealt with the classification and analysis of available parameters for faulty aircraft systems.

I am a DPhil student in International Development at the University of Oxford on the Procter Fellowship. My research explores household and school factors which affect children's learning and skills development. My DPhil examines the effects of two controversial education reforms in Ethiopia on children's achievement and explores how local-level dynamics influence the implementation of reforms. My MPhil dissertation suggested improvements to microeconomic theory about children's time allocation to work and school. Both projects have been conducted in collaboration with Young Lives, an international study of childhood poverty at Oxford, where I am a Research Associate. I have interned at the World Bank Development Economic Research Group in Washington and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Addis Ababa. I am also a Research Associate at the Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity at the University of Sussex. At Oxford I am supervised by Professor Stefan Dercon and Dr Laura Camfield. At Princeton I am affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson School and mentored by Professor Jeffrey Hammer.

Mareike Schildmann is an exchange student in the PhD-program at the German Department from January 2012 to January 2013. She is a doctoral candidate in the PhD-Net „Das Wissen der Literatur“ at the Humboldt University in Berlin and her research stay is organized within the institutional framework of the DAAD-sponsored Princeton–Humboldt-Exchange Program. Her dissertation is concerned with the notion of smallness and marginal figures in German literature at the beginning of the 20th century, with a focus on Robert Walser. The dissertation deals with forms of resistance against a modern paradigm of development, which is related to coeval discourses in pedagogy, sociology, psychology, history and economics.

During her study of philosophy and German literature at the Humboldt University Mareike Schildmann worked as a student assistant at the chair for modern literature and literary theory and the Heiner-Müller Archiv, where she provided editorial assistance for the work of Heiner Müller. From 2010 to 2011 she worked as a research and editorial assistant at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
In her spare time, Mareike Schildmann enjoys playing the violin and singing in the University’s Chamber choir.
 

I am a doctoral candidate at the Languages of Emotion graduate school of the Freie Universität in Berlin. My dissertation project “Sensualism in Germany: The Constitution of Sensualistic Aesthetics from Meier to Lessing” focuses on the second third of the 18th century. I am interested in how the new understanding of the human being and the different conceptions of emotion during this period influenced aesthetics and the moral mission of art. The Berlin Consortium for German Studies has provided me with the opportunity to spend 2012/13 as a visiting PhD student in the German Department.