We warmly congratulate our colleague and expert in the history of the discipline, Dr. Katja Geisenhainer, on being awarded the venia legendi in ethnology!
In January, Dr. Geisenhainer defended her dissertation titled “Concepts, Rivalries, Sympathies: Networks between Viennese and German Ethnologists from 1933 to 1945” and a lecture titled “Controversial Human Universals: Differences between the Ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and the Cultural Anthropologist Christoph Antweiler.” On May 13, 2026, Ms. Geisenhainer delivered her inaugural lecture at Goethe University titled “Ethnology, Ethnology, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Debate Over Renaming the German Society for Ethnology,” thereby addressing a topic that continues to spark heated discussions in our field to this day.
