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Rouven Symank

John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow & Visiting Scholar 2025-2026

Residency Dates: January 28, 2026 to December 19, 2026

Biography

Rouven Symank

Rouven Symank is a postdoctoral researcher at the SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence, hosted by Freie Universität Berlin. His research combines political theory with qualitative methods to explore questions of solidarity, justice, and the challenges facing democracy.

At the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), Symank will work on a manuscript entitled “The Global Politics of Cultural Restitution,” which analyzes the return of cultural heritage as a site of international norm contestation and a catalyst for deeper normative debates on property, justice, and historical reconciliation.

Symank holds a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and an M.A. from Humboldt University of Berlin. He previously held visiting research positions at University of Oxford, Sciences Po Paris, and University of California, Berkeley.

Symank currently serves as lead editor of a peer-reviewed special issue on cultural policy and as principal investigator of a project named “Restitution Think Tank” which is funded by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA). Outside of academia, he has worked in management consulting and public policy, including as a Carlo-Schmid Fellow at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York.

This information is accurate for the time period that the visiting scholar is affiliated with CES.

Affiliations

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Free University of Berlin
  • John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow & Visiting Scholar 2025-2026, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Project

The Global Politics of Cultural Restitution.

Discipline

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Philosophy

Areas of Expertise

  • Solidarity and Justice
  • Cultural heritage and global politics
  • International norms and institutions
  • European integration and transnational governance
  • Modern and contemporary political thought
  • Comparative political and social theory
  • Normative political analysis
  • Qualitative methods

Publications

Symank, R. “Durkheim’s Empire: The Concept of Solidarity and Its Colonial Dimension.” American Political Science Review, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055424001023

 
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