Internships and career prospects
Your practical professional experience will grow with the successful completion of internships, since you will gain new insight into potential fields of work in anthropology and cultural studies. We therefore recommended that you complete an internship or a practice-oriented project during your MATS studies, ideally during the semester break. Let us advise you on how to look for and find an internship that will help you with your specific career plans:
Module M4: Self-study module for individual profiling
Practice office of FB 9 with Ms. Wiltrud Hoffmann
The person responsible for Erasmus/International Affairs
The Bremen Institute for Cultural Research (bik e.V.) cooperates with public institutions in Bremen.
Certificate in Transcultural Communication and Diversity Competence
The certificate is awarded as an independent qualification certificate. It illustrates the relevant course content and the specializations in the compulsory elective area within the MA Transcultural Studies. The workload is 24 CP. The documents for the certificate are submitted to the responsible person. More information can be found here.
Responsible:
Dr. Margrit E. Kaufmann
Institute for Ethnology and Cultural Studies, IfEK
Bremen Institute for Cultural Research, bik
University of Bremen, FB 9
Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: 218-67631
Email: mkaufmprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
MATS alumni introduce themselves
Some alumni have provided us with profiles of their experience in the Mats and their current professional activities. (12/2023)
The profiles represent a selection of the various career opportunities in cultural studies:
Schirin Al-Madani (she/her)
PR, communication and digital visibility officer at the Bremen Council for Integration
Current job:
As a PR and Communications Officer at the BRI, Schirin is responsible for a wide range of tasks, including the preparation of scientific and political content for targeted communication by the BRI; the research of migration policy discourses (for example on the use of the term “clan criminality”); maintaining the digital presence of the BRI, including via social media channels; the management of BRI events (including workshops, seminars, specialist events and discussion forums) and the communication with the Executive Board and other committees. Shirin also performs press work, maintains internal BRI communication, and prepares speeches on topics such as intersectionality, social participation, diversity, anti-discrimination and equality issues in consultation with the Executive Board.
Vera Andreh (she/her)
Junior Expert in the Academy and Organizational Development department at “EAF-Diversity in Leadership” Berlin
MA Topic:
"’The path to Germany begins at home.’ Pre-integration and migration preparations from the perspective of Brazilians - an ethnographic study."
Completed:
06/2022
Current job:
Vera is currently working at the EAF: Diversity in Leadership in Berlin and has the following responsibilities:
- Content and organizational collaboration in training on diversity, equity & inclusion in companies and organizations
- Qualitative and quantitative data collection in organizations on the topic of diversity and equal opportunities in the context of organizational consulting
- Research and preparation of studies and methods on the topics of inclusive leadership, unconscious bias and gender competence
- Creation of a monthly newsletter on the topic of diversity and leadership
- Development of training modules on transculturality
- Collaboration in mentoring programs and consultations for organizational development that promotes diversity and equal opportunities
What did you gain from MATS?
"MATS has given me a critical perspective on diversity issues based on current scientific findings. I have command over the methods needed to make my perspective transparent and to use them in my research and work by reflecting on experiences of discrimination and privilege and looking at them in their social, political and postcolonial context. By focusing on transculturality and migration, I was able to develop my own areas of expertise, which I now incorporate into the design of training and diversity consulting modules in my profession. The MATS practical modules strengthened my ability to develop educational formats for the topics of transculturality, anti-racism and gender competence and to gain professionally relevant learning experiences."
Bianca Di Matteo Wambach (she/her)
Project manager "Protection for all! Holistic discrimination-sensitive protection concepts" at Coach e.V.
MA Topic:
"School management in migration society - Racism-critical impulses and reflections on organizational and personnel development in the education system."
Completed:
05/2023
Current job:
Bianca has been working at Coach e.V., a Cologne-based educational initiative since August 2023. She deals with the topic of holistic protection and rights concepts in child and youth work. She is revising Coach's protection concept so that discrimination as an everyday form of violence is also taken into account, supervises a facility in the process and organizes nationwide training courses on the topic of "intersectional protection concepts."
Lee Eisold (xier/xien)
Research Assistant / Research Associate at the KU Leuven (Belgium)
MA Topic:
“’Your queerness is not the same.’ Intersectional normalizations and discrimination in lgbt* contexts in Bremen.”
Online: Intersectional normalizations and discrimination in lgbt* contexts in Bremen.
Completed:
2021
Current activity:
Shortly after Lee's graduation, they started a PhD at the KU Leuven in Belgium: "As part of the SOLiDi training network, I am investigating how activists in Flanders apply their understandings of intersectionality to their contexts and make them fruitful for their practice. Because SOLiDi provides funding for 3 years, I can focus almost exclusively on my research. Thanks to this special form of funding, I have a close network of colleagues who are researching similar topics and with whom I can regularly exchange ideas. I do less teaching, as I am often on the road due to project workshops and have little knowledge of the discipline I am now officially in: geography."
What did you get out of the MATS?
"MATS gave me the theoretical and methodological foundations I need for my current research, as well as a preference for working beyond disciplinary boundaries. A special feature of MATS for me was and is uses research-based learning as a core approach. This allowed me to gain valuable practical experience during my studies, both in terms of collaborative ethnographic research and in the areas of political education, anti-discrimination and critical diversity."
Vera Heimisch (she/her)
Research assistant & freelance artistic production manager in the field of the performing arts.
MA Topic:
Vera created a magazine for her MA thesis. It deals with artistic interventions as decolonial strategy: https://boell-bremen.de/de/interventionen
Completed:
2020
Current job:
Vera works as a research assistant at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama, where she is involved in teaching and curriculum planning at the Institute for Cultural Management. She also works as a freelance production manager for festivals (mainly performance) and for individual artists/collectives.
What did you gain from MATS?
"The MATS reaffirmed my enthusiasm for ethnographic field research and enabled me to conduct my own research during my studies. The interdisciplinary combination of anthropology, religious studies and literary studies was very inspiring and still helps me today to work in increasingly interdisciplinary projects and teams. In addition, I found the MATS to be a Master's program in which you were very well and closely supervised, which was particularly helpful for my research in the EU border regime."
Current job:
Arabella Walter has been the Personal Advisor to the Senator for the Environment, Climate and Science since October, prior to which she was a research assistant at IfEK for 9 ½ months and a youth education officer for 6 ½ years. She has also been a freelance democracy trainer since 2018. Her day-to-day tasks are: strategic advice, preparing and accompanying the Senator to a wide variety of appointments, follow-up, research, cooperation with various specialist departments, networking with actors in the city/state, the writing of speeches; responsibility for staff (management team of the Senatorial Authority), advisory board, and participation issues.
What did you gain from MATS?
"A broad and curious perspective on "the political", the ability to take a critical look at power in social processes, to live with and appreciate complexity and ambiguity, to quickly familiarize myself with a wide variety of topics and to find something "exciting" everywhere, and finally the ability to adapt to very different people and experiences."
Current job:
Planning and coordination of the PRIMO language test and the subsequent pre-school/school language support, (outreach) counselling for services offered by the office of the Bremerhaven educational authority (language test, language support, Kita-Brückenjahr), various clerical tasks (creating and sending cover letters, data processing (test results)).