Across Boundaries – These Thomas Mann Fellows will receive a fellowship in Los Angeles in 2025
As part of the Thomas Mann Fellowship, fourteen personalities from the fields of science, media, business and culture will be discussing the annual theme ‘Across Boundaries’ at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles next year.
In the year of Thomas Mann’s 150th birthday, the fellows will explore what divides and unites us as a society – and what creative and interdisciplinary approaches exist to enable a more accessible public discourse in a liberal democracy. During their stays of several months in the former exile residence of the Mann family, the Thomas Mann House, they will work on their projects on the annual theme ‘Across Boundaries’ in dialogue with US experts and the public there.
These twelve fellows have been nominated by the independent advisory board of the Thomas Mann House for residencies in the coming year: author Hila Amit, journalist Susanne Beyer, Islamic scholar Sonja Hegasy, journalist Uwe Jean Heuser, management consultant Rana Deep Islam, journalist Sandra Kegel, sociologist Nils Christian Kumkar, director and dramaturge Johannes Müller, comedian and author Oliver Polak, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology Robert Riener, author Margaryta Surzhenko and curator and concert designer Steven Walter.
In addition, the philosopher Susan Neiman and the lawyer and journalist Ronen Steinke will be visiting the Thomas Mann House as Honorary Fellows in 2025.
The Thomas Mann Fellowships are intended to make the house a place from which debates on fundamental contemporary and future issues on both sides of the Atlantic, including with a view to the Pacific, can be initiated in the spirit of Thomas Mann.
The Krupp Foundation, the Berthold Leibinger Foundation and the German Federal Foreign Office make the Thomas Mann Fellowships possible. The non-profit organisation Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House is funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Goethe-Institut.