Prof. Dr. Nadja Meisterhans

Prof. Dr. Nadja Meisterhans

At the university since

  • September 2021

Focus on teaching

  • Head of study program Citizenship and Civic Engagement B.A. and Globalization, Governance and Law B.A.
  • International Relations B.A.
  • Politics, Philosophy and Economics B.A.
  • Citizenship and Civic Engagement B.A.
  • Globalization, Governance and Law B.A.
  • Social Transformation Master

Main research areas

  • Political theory/political philosophy (especially critical theory and psychoanalytical and postcolonial feminist critique of power and domination)
  • Critical global governance (especially post-development and global health) Global law (especially human rights)
  • Psychoanalytical social psychology
  • Since 2019: Board member of the Society for Psychoanalytical Social Psychology (GfpS)
  • http://psychoanalytischesozialpsychologie.de/
  • Since 2019: Head of the working group “Psychoanalysis and Critique. Transdisciplinary Perspectives” at the Society for Psychoanalytical Social Psychology (GfpS) (together with Dr. Daniel Zettler)
    psychoanalytischesozialpsychologie.de/arbeitsgruppen/ag-kritische-theorie-polwi-soz/. 

Interested students and researchers are cordially invited to attend and participate in the meetings (hybrid format) of the “Psychoanalysis and Critique” working group! If you are interested, please send an e-mail to: nmeisterhans(at)karlshochschule.de

Current research project

The dialectic of the pandemic: between authoritarianism and utopia? (approved by the FWF-Austrian Science Fund)

m.pf.fwf.ac.at/en/research-in-practice/project-finder/53947 

The project was transferred to the German Research Foundation (DFG ) as part of the “Money follows Researcher” program.

For a detailed project description see link

Professional background / practical experience

Since Sept. 2021
Professor of Political Philosophy with a focus on Global Governance, Civil Society and Social Movements at Karlshochschule International University

WS 2020
Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Development at the University of Vienna

WS 2020
Lecturer at the University of Vienna at the Faculty of Psychology / Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences of the BFI/Vienna in the field of Political Economy

Since 12.2019
Board member of the Society for Psychoanalytical Social Psychology

2015 – 2021
Lecturer at the Karlshochschule/International University in the study programs “Politics, Philosophy and Economics”, “International Relations”, and “Civic Engagement” in Karlsruhe

02.2017 – 31.1.2020
PostDoc/Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Social and Societal Policy of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Johannes Kepler University Linz (75 %)

03.2015 – 31.1.2017
Lecturer at the Institute for Social and Sociopolitical Policy at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences at the Johannes Kepler University Linz

08.2016 – 12.2016
Research Assistant/PostDoc at the Institute of Political Science, Department of Political Theory, Justus Liebig University Giessen

09.2013 – 03.2016
Scientific advisor to the managing director of the human rights organization Medico International, Frankfurt/Main

04.2013 – 08.2013
Lecturer at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Digital Media department)

04.2013 – 08.2013
Lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, Department of Political Theory and History of Ideas at TU Darmstadt

10.2012 – 08.2013
Lecturerat the Institute for Political Science at the Justus Liebig University Giessen

11. 2011 – 10.2012
DeputyJuniorProfessor for Democracy Research at the Institute of Political Science at Justus Liebig University Giessen

10.2011 – 03.2012
Lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, Department of Political Theory and History of Ideas at TU Darmstadt

11.2010 – 10.2011
Research assistant for special teaching tasks at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Flensburg

05.2010 – 10.2013
Freelance political consultant at “Deichblick” – Agency for Film and Television, Bremen

09.2006 – 05.2010
Research assistant

Further information

International research collaborations and memberships in international research networks:

  • University of Vienna (Austria): Cooperation with the Institute for Political Science and the Institute for International Development as part of the DFG project “The Dialectics of the Pandemic”
  • University of Art and Design Linz (Austria): Cooperation with the Department of Cultural Studies as part of the DFG project “The Dialectics of the Pandemic”
  • Psychoanalytical University (IPU), Berlin: Cooperation in the field of cultural theory and psychoanalysis
  • Political Psychology Working Group at Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • Working Group Political Psychology at the Sigmund Freud Institute, Frankfurt/Main

Civil society engagement

  • Medico International (international human rights and aid organization)
  • Peoples Health Movement (shadow reports in the WHO)
  • Political consulting at the Institute for Solidary Modernity as well as diverse civil society involvement in the areas of gender, democracy and human rights.

Expert activity

  • BioMed Central, STM (Science, Technology and Medicine), peer-reviewed open access journal, Springer Press.
  • Middle East – Topics & Arguments, open access, peer reviewed online journal
  • Momentum Quarterly, Zeitschrift für Sozialen Fortschritt/Journal for Societas Progress

Publications (selection)

Monographs

  • Human rights as a global social practice of domination. Zur Demokratisierung und Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts, published in a series on political sociology edited by Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide and Andrew Arato, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010

Editorships

  • Feminist critiques and human rights. Reflections on a Productive Tense Relationship, Volume 27, Series: Politics and Gender, Opladen: Budrich Verlag, 2016, together with Imke Leicht, Christine Löw, Katharina Volk
  • Rethinking materiality. Thinking Materiality Differently – Feminist Interventions, Volume 28, Series: Politics and Gender, Opladen: Budrich Verlag, 2017, together with Imke Leicht, Christine Löw, Katharina Volk
  • Book series “Politics and Gender” Barbara Budrich Verlag (together with Imke Leicht, Christine Löw, Katharina Volk, Katharina) (October 2012 – September 2014)
  • Introductory volumes “Politik und Geschlecht kompakt”, Barbara Budrich Verlag (together with Imke Leicht, Christine Löw, Katharina Volk, Katharina) (October 2012 – September 2014)

Articles in specialist journals/journal articles (peer reviewed)

  • The Great Failure in the Pandemic: Power and Domination Critical Notes on the Intersectional Dimensions of a Politically Made Catastrophe. In: Momentum Quaterly Vol. 11, No. 2 (2022), p. 77 – 142
    https://www.momentum-quarterly.org/ojs2/index.php/momentum/article/view/4082
  • Authoritarian Populism and the Dialectics of Desire. Perspectives of Ideology-Critique, in: Berlin Journal of Critical Theory, Volume 5, Number 1 (January, 2021), pp. 99 – 131
    https://www.bjct.de/files/Issues%20of%20the%20BJCT/BJCT_1-2021.pdf
  • Wider dem Tod der feministischen Utopie – Zum emanzipatorischen Potential radikalfeministischer und postkolonialer Ansätze in Zeiten des autoritären Backlashs, in: Femina Politica – Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft, 2019, pp. 72 – 84.
    https://doi.org/10.3224/feminapolitica.v28i1.06
  • The discomfort of neoliberalism. Post-ideological thinking and right-wing populism – a secret liaison? in: Psychology and Social Criticism, edited by Markus Brunner, thematic focus: The New Right, issue 3/4, 41st year, 163/164, 2017, p. 109 – 129
  • WHO in Crisis. Lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak and beyond, in: The Chinese Journal of Global Governance (peer-reviewed, open-access, interdisciplinary academic journal), No. 2, 2016, pp.1 – 29
  • The neoliberal fairy tale of benevolent entrepreneurship: Philanthrocapitalism as a master discourse, in: Zeitschrift “Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik, “Sozialer Wandel und Subjektivität”, edited by Markus Brunner and Nora Ruck, Pabst Science Publisher, Jg. 38, Issue 2 – 3, 2015, p. 41 – 63
  • Constitutionalization Perspectives of Fragmented World Law, (with Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes) in: Hauke Brunkhorst (ed.), Demokratie in der Weltgesellschaft (Soziale Welt Sonderband Nr. 18), Baden-Baden, 2009, pp.159 – 184, has also been published in a special volume on globalization in the Montenegrin journal PLIMA, supported by the S. Fischer Foundation and edited by Hauke Brunkhorst
  • Health for all: Implementing the Right to Health in the Post-2015 Agenda – Critical Interventions from the Global South (in English and Spanish) in: Social Medicine/Medicina Social (bilingual, academic, open-access journal, published by the Department of Family and Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Latin American Social Medicine Association – ALAMES), 2015, pp. 109 – 125. Published as part of Go4health – FP 7 – The European Union’s Seventh Program for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement

Articles in specialist journals/journal articles (reviewed by the editors)

  • From paranoia to utopia with psychoanalysis and surrealism? Perspectives on ideological criticism in times of transformation, in: Freie Assoziation. Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Sozialpsychologie, forthcoming.
  • Human rights and democracy – a cosmopolitan perspective (together with Franziska Martinsen and Rainer Schmalz-Bruns), in: Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte No. 2, 2008, pp. 26 – 44
  • Feminist networking – a (self-)critical stocktaking, in: Femina Politica, Issue 1/2014 (together with Leicht, Imke/Löw, Christine/Volk, Katharina Volk), p. 161 – 162
  • An alternative model of governance? In: Journal for Development and Cooperation (DC), 2014/07, Frankfurter Societäts-Medien, pp. 296 – 298
  • The killing spree as an alienated and androcentric desire for recognition, in: Normalungetüme: School Shootings aus psychoanalytisch-sozialpsychologischer Perspektive, in: Brunner, Markus/ Lohl, Jan (ed.) PsychoSozial Verlag, Gießen, 2013, p. 35 – 58
  • The construction of the state of nature as a narrative? An attempt at an anti-metaphysical application, in: Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte/Journal for Human Rights, Wochenschauverlag, Vol.7, No.1, 7, 2013, pp. 152 – 163
  • Normativity and narration. How stories of injustice drive the human rights discourse, in: Kritische Justiz, Heft. 1, 2010, S. 22 – 28.
  • Peace through Kant’s world citizenship? In: Berliner Debatte Initial 15: 4 2004, p. 103 – 112

Articles in edited volumes (peer reviewed)

Articles in edited volumes (reviewed by the editors)

  • The Dialectics of Desire. Feminist-psychoanalytical Perspectives on Law,in: Buchhammer, Brigitte/Kallhoff, Angela: Human Rights. Feminist and Genderphilosophical Perspectives. Series of the Society for Women in Philosophy, 2021, pp. 32 – 65.
  • Das Subjekt des Politischen, in: Thore Prien (ed.): Der Staat im Empire. On the State Theory of Post-Operaism, Nomos: Baden-Baden, forthcoming
  • Human rights without the state? On the necessity of post-national fundamental rights, in: Deitelhoff, Nicole/Steffek, Jens (eds.): Was bleibt vom Staat? Democracy, Constitution and Law in the Global Age, Frankfurt/Main, 2010, pp. 281 – 308.
  • Neue Ordnungsmuster in Recht und Politik der globalen Sicherheit, in: Ordnungsmuster der globalen Sicherheit (with Andreas Fischer-Lescano), in: Andreas Fischer-Lescano/ Peter Mayer (eds.), Recht und Politik globaler Sicherheit: Bestandsaufnahme und Erklärungsansätze, Berlin/Campus 2013, p. 363 – 383

Miscellaneous

Essays at the interface between politics and science (Policy Papers)

Comments

  • Increase the presence of women and promote feminist research. The working group “Politics and Gender” in the German Political Science Association, in: WissenschaftInnen-Rundbrief FU Berlin, No. 1/2013, p. 17 – 18 (together with Imke Leicht, Christine Löw, Katarina Volk

Interviews (written)

  • Human Rights as an Emerging Process, Interview with Charles Beitz, in: Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte, vol. 4, no.2, 2010, pp.148 – 154 (together with Regina Kreide and Petra Gümplowa)

Scientific opinions

  • Perspectives and challenges of interlinking science and civil society to strengthen the topic of global health in Germany, expert interview-based report for Medico International, completed February 2016

Research reports

  • “Trans psychoanalytics”? New perspectives on a psychoanalytically inspired critique of power and domination? A Commentary on a Research Debate and a Review of Transgender Studies Quarterly, in: Transgender Quaterly, Focus Issue: Transpsychoanalytics, in: RISS. Journal for Psychoanalysis, 2019, No. 91

Reviews

  • On Jens Wissel/Stefanie Wöhl (eds.): Staatstheorie vor neuen Herausforderungen under the title “Die Rückkehr einer bereits Todgesagten. On the renaissance of the materialist theory of the state, in: Neue Politische Literatur, 2010, No. 2, pp. 356 – 357
  • On Peter Niesen: Kant’s Theory of Freedom of Speech, Baden-Baden, in: Kantstudien, 2010, pp. 25 – 30
  • On Herfried Münkler, Empires. The logic of world domination. From Ancient Rome to the United States, Berlin 2005, in: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift 4/2006, p. 738 – 740 (together with Oliver Eberl)