Climate Research: ‘Empirical Transport Time Scales in the Tropopause Region’

Vera Bense tracks the course of the HALO high-altitude research aircraft live on her laptop. The meteorology graduate points to the screen: “At present, it is just passing over Tenerife”. In three days, the HALO plane will be arriving in Tierra del Fuego in the far south of Argentina. Then a complex measurement project will be initiated which will provide more information on the atmospheric processes in the southern hemisphere.

What is of specific interest in this context is the tropopause region, the transition zone between the troposphere, where weather events originate, and the more stable stratosphere located above it. The processes that occur here have a direct effect on the climate. Both Prof. Peter Hoor of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Prof. Andreas Engel of the Institute for Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt have been undertaking research in this field for many years.   They have joined together for this project, entitled ‘Empirical Transport Time Scales in the Tropopause Region’, which is being sponsored by the RMU Initiative Funding for Research.

“Our two research teams complement each other perfectly,” says Bense. “The Frankfurt group focuses on measuring levels of the trace gas sulfur hexafluoride, while we in Mainz are more interested in carbon dioxide.” It is necessary to determine the concentrations of both gases in order to understand the processes in the tropopause region. Data is already available for the northern hemisphere but this is lacking to a large extent for the southern hemisphere. That is now set to change. The two universities are cooperating within a larger consortium of other partners all of whom are working towards better understanding the role played by the tropopause region in the Earth’s climate system.

 

 Master’s degree program: Children’s Literature/Book Studies

“The Department for Children’s and Young Adult Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Department of Book Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz are already leading lights in this discipline,” points out Prof. Ute Dettmar.  “Now we have come together to offer a joint degree course. Thanks to the close proximity of both universities we can provide something really unique.” The new joint Master’s degree program will be launched shortly, and for the just 20 available places 55 applications have already been submitted originating from all over Germany and even from abroad. “We couldn’t have wished for a better start.”

Dettmar represents the Frankfurt side of the collaboration. “Our focus is on literary criticism aspects in particular. We are interested in narrative style, narrative form, and the question of how that narration is developed.” Junior Professor Corinna Norrick-Rühl, a member of the Mainz team, takes up the thread: “Whereas we look, among other things, at the financial side of book publishing and the media market.” Common to both teams are their close contacts with the world of practice and the local publishing world.

“As part of this unique collaboration, we will also be undertaking new research,” announces Dettmar. This will also go beyond subject boundaries, as interdisciplinarity is an important feature of the course program. “We don’t want to simply offer activities at two locations, but create common formats,” concludes Norrick-Rühl. “A monitoring system will also be in place to enable us to fine-tune and take new insights into account.”

 

For a practical course in Medical Technology: A robotic operating room assistant 

The articulated robotic arm tirelessly and precisely pricks a hollow needle into the soft pad in front of it. “This robot was created by a 3D printer, which means we only needed to buy a few additional parts,” says Prof. Mario Kupnik, who heads up the Measurement and Sensor Technology Group at Technische Universität Darmstadt.  Felix Herbst is a student of Electrical Engineering who constructed the robotic operating room assistant as part of his Bachelor thesis. One of the requirements was that it had to be inexpensive, a prerequisite that Herbst has managed to meet. It actually costs only €600 to produce.

“This robot will not be for everyday clinical use, but will be employed in the context of our recently created ‘Practical Course in Medical Technology’”, says Kupnik. The concept for this innovative course was developed as a result of the introduction of a joint study course in Medical Technology offered by TU Darmstadt and Goethe University Frankfurt. “It was clear to us that in this context it is particularly important to provide our students with practical insight into the use of medical robots.” In the coming years, students of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering will also be able to attend the practical course. The course scenario - automated needle insertion - will give them the opportunity to program and work with a number of robots in small groups. 

“We in Darmstadt are contributing our technical know-how to the project,” states Kupnik. The medical aspects of the project are being handled by Prof. Thomas J. Vogl, Director of the Institute of Interventional Radiology at Frankfurt University Medical Center.  The collaborative project is being sponsored by the RMU Initiative Funding for Teaching.

 

AccellencE Research Training Group: Accelerator Science and Technology for Energy-Recovery Linacs

Darmstadt is home to the first energy recovery linac (ERL) in Germany, the S-DALINAC electron accelerator. In Mainz, planning and development is underway for a further ERL for the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence. The MESA accelerator will begin operation in 2023. “This is a unique set of circumstances for our doctoral students,” declares Prof. Norbert Pietralla of the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Technische Universität Darmstadt.  “At our facility they can learn and familiarize themselves with an existing ERL. At the same time they’ll also be able to contribute their own input to the development of the new ERL in Mainz and follow its construction. You can’t get a more rounded approach than that.”

Since 2016, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has financed the AccellencE 2128 Research Training Group, which is a joint undertaking of the Nuclear Physics institutes at Technische Universität Darmstadt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The focus, therefore, will be entirely on the new ERL, a device that has yet to be fully researched. These particle accelerators work particularly efficiently because they recover a large portion of the energy used to accelerate the particles. In other words, while standard accelerators simply fire particles at a target, an ERL is able to recycle many of them.  For example, where one gigawatt of energy would normally be needed for a particular operation, one megawatt would be sufficient in the case of an ERL.

“Our institutes of higher education in Mainz and Darmstadt already have outstanding expertise when it comes to energy recovery electron accelerators,” says Pietralla, “and our young researchers can profit from that.” The research training group, he argues, is helping shape the next generation of experts in an important future technology.

 

Africans in the Rhine-Main Region: Linguistic integration research project

Earlier this year, the Institute of African Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Institute of Ethnology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz launched a joint research project entitled ‘Africans in the Rhine-Main Region’. It is designed to investigate linguistic integration - and discover how people who originate from Africa or have an African heritage learn the German language. The aim of the project is also to identify the strategies they employ in this context and what language learning means to them while, at the same time, also of interest is finding out what happens with the languages these individuals bring with them.  

“This is a genuine pioneering project, as nothing comparable has ever been done before,” emphasizes Dr. Sabine Littig of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. ‘Africans in the Rhine-Main Region’ is being financed by the RMU Initiative Funding for Research. The project coordinators are Prof. Axel Fleisch in Frankfurt and Junior Professor Nico Nassenstein in Mainz.  The implementation of the project is largely the responsibility of Littig and her Frankfurt colleague Dr. Klaudia Dombrowsky-Hahn. They combine various methodological approaches in order to investigate conceptions of language and communicative practices. It would appear that African people more readily learn languages through informal processes that take place outside the classroom and language courses. There has so far been very little academic research into this spontaneous form of language learning, although it seems to be highly effective. 

“Most of those questioned were remarkably multilingual,” Littig said of the project’s early findings. It also became apparent that in acquiring everyday speech, different cognitive processes come into play that differ from those involved in learning German in a formal course. However, the findings are as yet tentative as the project has only just been launched.

With the project "Afrikaner*innen im Rhein-Main-Gebiet" (Africans in the Rhine-Main region), the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance, founded in May 2016 by the universities of Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt, wants to make a scientific contribution to the highly topical, politically and socially much discussed subject of language and integration – from the specific perspective of African linguistics. For this purpose, Professor Nico Nassenstein from the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Professor Axel Fleisch from the Institute of African Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt investigate how migrants from Africa approach new linguistic realities in Germany and which perceptions they have of both their own languages and the target language. "Initially, we will be working with colleagues we already know from research environments in West and Central Africa. We will then broaden the range of the study and approach participants from the entire Rhine-Main region," explained Nassenstein. Interested parties from the Rhine-Main region who would like to participate in the study within the scope of the RMU project can as of now contact littig@uni-mainz.de via email for further information.

The RMU cooperation project is outstanding in that Africanists are conducting their research in Germany and not on the African continent. They focus on the mechanisms that are decisive in whether linguistic integration functions or fails. In Europe, linguistic integration is typically understood as being primarily dependent on the successful acquisition of the target language and its structure. However, language acquisition mainly takes place in informal contexts outside the classroom. This spontaneous language learning, which often goes hand in hand with creative learning strategies and can be unexpectedly successful, has hardly ever been the subject of scientific investigation. Over the next two years, Dr. Sabine Littig from JGU and Professor Abdourahmane Diallo from Goethe University will research this linguistic integration.

Joint Bachelor's degree program in African Studies
The African Studies departments at Mainz and Frankfurt successfully applied for financial support from the 2017 RMU Initiative Funding for Teaching and are now planning a joint Bachelor's degree program in African Studies. It will bundle the courses offered at both universities and will comprise diverse subject areas concerning African linguistics and other research branches of African Studies. "This joint Bachelor's degree program will offer our students a far wider spectrum of languages and topics," said Professor Axel Fleisch. The new program is to combine linguistic expertise with subjects from sociolinguistics and media studies as well as linguistic anthropology and communication studies, which will also play a role in the curriculum.

African Studies Rhine-Main
Goethe University Frankfurt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and TU Darmstadt pool their expertise in the field of African research in the interdisciplinary African Studies Rhine-Main alliance. In addition to the disciplines of Anthropology and African Studies, other areas such as Egyptology, Linguistics and Literature, Geography, Botany, and Economics are also involved. The pivotal entity serving the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance is the Center for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) in Frankfurt.

The RMU Initiative Funding for Research
The Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) are strengthening their mutual networks through the RMU Initiative Funding for Research. From the last call for proposals comprising a total of 49 applicants, six new research projects in African Studies, Educational Research, Computer Science, Meteorology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Business Education will be funded over the coming two years, each with up to EUR 100,000 per year.

 

Contact:
Professor Dr. Nico Nassenstein
Department of Anthropology and African Studies
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
55099 Mainz, GERMANY
phone +49 6131 39-20356
e-mail: nnassens@uni-mainz.de
http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/3036.php

Professor Dr. Axel Fleisch
Institute of African Studies
Goethe University Frankfurt
60325 Frankfurt am Main, GERMANY
phone +49 69 798-28262
e-mail: a.fleisch@em.uni-frankfurt.de
https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/71087855/Axel-Fleisch

 

A selection of views of Lake Malawi adorns the walls of the offices of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) of Goethe University Frankfurt. There are fishing boats to be seen - some silhouetted against the blue of the water, others colored red by the sundown. It was Dr. Stefan Schmid who took these photos while he was in East Africa. Schmid, who holds a doctorate in geography, and his colleague, the biologist Dr. Karen Hahn, coordinate the projects, activities and events organized by the ZIAF. “The ZIAF has been in existence as a separate organization since 2003, but what makes us special is that we are one of the few such institutes in Germany that is not linked to one specific academic discipline. We work on a completely interdisciplinary basis,” explains Schmid. “The President’s Office of Goethe University originally decided to establish the ZIAF and made the necessary finances available.” 

Following the formation of the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance by the universities in Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt in May 2016, all three locations can now benefit from the support of the ZIAF. "As we already have the required structures in place, it seems only reasonable to allow all three universities to profit from what we have to offer,” adds Hahn. “When we got down to forming the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance, we were all agreed that there was no need to specifically formalize this aspect of our work. What we concentrate on is the actual research, although at the same time we do take a very pragmatic approach when we consider what the ZIAF should be coordinating.”

The ZIAF in Frankfurt currently counts among its members some 80 academics from seven faculties of Goethe University together with affiliated organizations, including the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) and the Frobenius Institute, and it thus plays a correspondingly important role in the new African Studies Rhine-Main alliance. In addition, Hahn and Schmid are also witnessing the generation of innovative synergies as a result of the collaboration with the universities in Mainz and Darmstadt. "For instance, we are already seeing a close partnership developing between the botanists in Mainz and Frankfurt,” points out Hahn. "They are looking at each other’s work and determining whether this can help with their own research.” Related disciplines have expressed interest in participating and plans for a new research network in the field of gene evolution and ecology are already on the table. "In addition, several postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates have formed their own group. There will be plenty going on there, too." 

Hahn also expects there will be fresh input to the DFG-sponsored AFRASO or Africa’s Asian Options project, which researches the connections between Asia and Africa. "The project is at present in its phase-out period and we will be drafting new concepts for a follow-up project.” Schmidt considers it possible that one potential topic could be the links between Africa and a wide range of other countries. "Many people in Germany are unaware of the fact that Turkey is among the major investors when it comes to Africa.”

The objective of the new alliance is not to reinvent African Studies as such, but this discipline will be given new life through the collaboration between Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt and, at the same time, will be put on a broader footing. "In many areas, we are able to tie in with what is already in place,” clarifies Schmid. “One feature of the program of the ZIAF was an event for young researchers on the subject of the ethics of research in Africa. We have since developed these individual events into a seminar, and can now invite our colleagues in Mainz and Darmstadt to participate.”

The general intention is to considerably facilitate access to existing resources for all three partners. Schmidt cites the examples of the Rock Art Archive held by the Frobenius Institute and the former DFG African Special Collection in Frankfurt’s university library: "The latter is by far the largest collection of works in the fields of the humanities, culture and social sciences focusing on Africa south of the Sahara.” JGU also has unique and valuable holdings in this respect in the form of the Jahn Library for African Literatures and its African Music Archives. "You’ll only find something similar in the USA,” avers Prof. Thomas Bierschenk of JGU’s Department of Anthropology and African Studies.  "And our Ethnographic Teaching Collection would be enough to start furnishing a museum.” 

Schmid looks across to his photos of Malawi. "Of course, we’ll also be sharing the infrastructures we have already established in the various African countries, such as our centers in Mali and in Malawi.  Looks to me inevitable that these could provide the bases for mutual teaching or research trips. Someone in Mainz has recently written a dissertation on our Cultural and Museum Center in Karonga."

Prof. Bierschenk does not merely have his eye on the continent of Africa when he talks about the African Studies Rhine-Main alliance from the point of view of JGU - for him, it is the research landscape as a whole that is important and the role that the project will play in that context.   "There are only very few major African Studies centers in Germany,” he says. "Admittedly, there is a lot going on in Berlin, but their activities are not particularly well coordinated. The subject has traditionally been a research focus of the University of Bayreuth and this probably represents the main center of African Studies in Europe. But our alliance means we can certainly compete with them. Our centers in Frankfurt and Mainz are influential in their own right - together with Darmstadt we are now a major player.”

The participating researchers are busy on many different levels deciding on the direction that this new consortium should take. "A project already in the pipeline involves appointments to two professorships in Frankfurt and Mainz that became vacant at more or less the same time,” asserts Bierschenk. Both locations currently only each have a single professor of linguistics working in the field of African Studies. "In view of the fact there are more than 3,000 languages spoken in Africa, our professors seem rather thin on the ground. So we intend to supplement them: in Frankfurt, they’ll be focusing on empirical linguistics while we will be appointing a professor of sociolinguistics - and together we plan to develop a shared degree course. This will enable us to extend and round out our linguistics curriculum.” Bierschenk believes that this concept could well set a precedent: “In the near future, we’ll see a whole new generation moving into place in both Frankfurt and Mainz. It will be necessary to make new appointments to quite a few professorships in the coming years. This will be an opportunity that we can exploit.”

In structural terms, the African Studies departments in Mainz and Frankfurt complement each other perfectly. “In Frankfurt, their core unit specifically devoted to African Studies is actually relatively small, but many other disciplines there are extensively involved in the subject in one way or another.” The corresponding core unit in Mainz is more extensive. “With its more than 30 personnel, the Department of Anthropology and African Studies on the Gutenberg campus is one of the largest university centers for sociological and cultural research on Africa in Germany.” Darmstadt has its own special role to play. “It’s true that they do not have a dedicated African Studies department, but the Darmstadt academics have particular expertise in the fields of urban planning and the history of technology. They are very useful cooperation partners when we are dealing with aspects such as the development or sociology of African settlements.” 

Frankfurt, Mainz and Darmstadt aim to construct an African Studies network that brings together the three universities, coordinates their teaching and research capacities and - last but not least - takes new directions within the discipline. At the same time, they propose to retain and improve on those aspects that are already tried-and-tested. The alliance is large and will be able to achieve much.

The rejection of a funding application does not necessarily signal the end for a research project. This was the experience of the urban planner Jochen Monstadt from TU Darmstadt, whose participation in a joint application for a collaborative research centre on urbanity in Africa together with the Goethe University was rejected in 2011.

“The subject was so interesting that we simply continued with the research,” says the Professor for Spatial and Infrastructure Planning at TU Darmstadt. This perseverance was eventually rewarded three years later: The Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf and the Graduate School for Urban Studies URBANgrad, an interdisciplinary academic institution at Technische Universität Darmstadt, approved funding for a joint graduate programme named “Urban Infrastructures in Transition: The Case of African Cities”. In addition, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has welcomed one partner each from Darmstadt and Frankfurt onto its priority programme “Adaptation and Creativity in Africa”.

There is nowhere else in the world where the urbanisation and dynamic growth of cities is as high as in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cities such as Dar es Salaam in Tanzania or Nairobi in Kenya grow by many hundreds of thousands of inhabitants every year – presenting them with enormous challenges, not least when it comes to the provision of infrastructure services.

The scholars at the TU Darmstadt and the Goethe University are carrying out in-depth research into this subject in their joint graduate programme: They are studying the history of, and the current transition of those cities and their interplay with the provision of energy, water, wastewater, transport and telecommunication services.

The scholars have since been collaborating with the universities in both of these global cities in Eastern Africa. The researchers selected the cities of Dar es Salaam and Nairobi as comparative cases.

“Both cities were part of the former British Empire that have experienced sharp increases in population and the unplanned development of settlements,” says Professor Monstadt. While Kenya’s economy has for a long time been more dynamic, the current security situation and ethnic tensions pose political and economic challenges making up leeway for strong economic growth in Dar es Salaam, according to the 48 year old professor.

Splintered urbanism

In their research projects, the researchers in the graduate programme are investigating, amongst other things, the water and wastewater systems in these capital cities. In the city of Dar es Salaam with its around 4.8 million inhabitants, up to 80 percent of the settlements are unplanned. Accordingly, access to centralized electricity, water and wastewater networks is splintered, and critical services are often provided through alternative solutions such as water kiosks and water traders or informal “spaghetti pipes”.

At the same time, only around ten percent of the population are connected to a central wastewater system, with its associated challenges for urban hygiene and public health. As an example, one PhD student is focussing, amongst other things, on the sanitary challenge for women in unplanned settlements.

However, the researchers are also investigating themes such as stormwater management, innovative bus rapid transit systems, mobile water and energy payment innovations and technology hubs in the field of information and communication technologies in the East African metropolises. How does the supply of necessary infrastructure and urban development change when around 90 percent of the inhabitants own a mobile phone and thus can increasingly pay for their bus or electricity and water bills using the mobile currency M-Pesa that was developed in Kenya?

International teams and the vision of a “networked city”

In order to explore these issues, the PhD students and research scientists spend many weeks and months per year carrying out field research in the African cities. The group of PhD students within the Africa Programme have a very interdisciplinary and international background. They originally come from France, Belgium, India, Germany and three East African countries, while their professions include city and urban planners, architects, geographers or historians.

Are recommendations for action also developed at the end of their research projects? “The primary aim is to carry out fundamental research into historical and current trends in African cities and their planning, with less emphasis on advising African colleagues or local partners in these countries,” says Jochen Monstadt. The professor avoids using the term “development assistance” and prefers to describe the goal as “improving the exchange of academic knowledge”.

The focus of the 48 year old’s own field research is the translation of the ideal of a “networked city” in African contexts. A networked city is the ideal concept for a modern city in which all areas and city districts have access to universal services at uniform prices, quality and comprehensive connections to, for example, electricity, water, health facilities or means of public transport.

Megacities in Africa, however, defy such an ideal of urban modernity developed in the global North. In Dar es Salaam, the reality is that only 30 percent of the population have access to a central water supply networks according to Monstadt. The researcher from Darmstadt is investigating how the transfer of this model of a networked city has shaped urban and infrastructure planning and development, as well as which alternative modernities are being developed in these cities.