On October 1, 2025, the second cohort of Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures” took up their work at the Universities of Duisburg-Essen and Ruhr University Bochum. The seven fully-funded and two affiliated doctoral researchers of this cohort join their fellow researchers already enrolled in the programme and, over the course of the next four years, will conduct research and fieldwork on a broad variety of research topcs related to conceptions of the future in East Asia.

The cohort’s first joint explorations of both Departments of East Asian Studies finished with an excursion to the exhibition “Weltsichten” (Views of the World) at the Museum Unter Tage in Bochum-Weitmar. The photograph shows the doctoral researchers Aman VERMA, Hirotaka KOBAYASHI, Lea WALLRAFF, Konrad BÖHM, Arne MEYER, Seo Yeon HAN, Martyna SZOJA, Xiaoyu XIONG and the Speaker Prof. Christine MOLL-MURATA (Doctoral researcher Liliia PEICHEVA is missing in this picture).