Dr. Meike Lettau appointed to the Junior Professorship for Cultural and Media Policy Studies

“As a PhD graduate in Cultural Studies with a focus on cultural policy and international cultural cooperation, the Junior Professorship in Cultural and Media Policy Studies is a very interesting and appropriate field of activity for me. I am fascinated by the conceptual combination of interdisciplinary and practice-oriented cultural policy research with social transformation processes. I see this idea put into effect in both the teaching assignment and in the study concept at Zeppelin University,” Lettau explains. “I can’t wait to initiate international, interdisciplinary and innovative projects together with my new colleagues and to share my contacts in universities in North and West Africa.”

Meike Lettau, born in Bielefeld and raised in Gebesee, Thuringia, studied a bachelor’s degree in art education and geography at the University of Dresden and a master’s degree in cultural mediation at the University of Hildesheim. There, at the Institute for Cultural Policy, she was invited to speak on the topic “Artists as Agents of Change? Foreign Cultural Policy and Civil Society Engagement in Transformation Processes” taking as an example the Arab Spring upheavals in Tunisia. During her doctoral studies, she took on the coordination of the research training group “Performing Sustainability. Cultures and Development in West-Africa”, which is carried out in cooperation between the University of Hildesheim, the University of Maiduguri (Nigeria) and the University of Cape Coast (Ghana) and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Meike Lettau was also an associated research fellow in the German-Tunisian research group “Tunisia in Transition” at the Chair of International Politics at the University of Passau and has worked for various academic and cultural institutions in Germany and abroad – including the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and the International Society of Fine Arts (IGBK) in Berlin or the Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi. At ZU, her research perspective will focus in particular on cultural policy, cultural activism, international cultural relations, and culture and sustainability. For students, she is already offering a summer school on cultural policy issues at “documenta fifteen” in September.

“Her academic achievements to date demonstrate that Meike Lettau is well versed in international, interdisciplinary, and innovative research and teaching formats. We as a university can only benefit from this in addition to her extensive practical experience of cultural institutions and cultural policy. We are therefore very much looking forward to a collaboration that promises to be both inspiring and enriching,” said ZU President Professor Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn.