Horkheimer Fellowship
Con objeto de honrar el legado del filósofo, sociólogo y director durante muchos años del Instituto de Investigación Social Max Horkheimer, como cofundador de la teoría crítica, el IfS concede desde el año 2023 el Horkheimer Fellowship a posdoctorandos internacionales. La finalidad de la beca es promover a investigadores e investigadoras destacados de las disciplinas social, humanística y cultural que, durante su estancia de tres meses en el instituto, deseen realizar un proyecto de investigación.
La convocatoria tiene lugar con carácter anual.
Call for Applications
Horkheimer Fellowship 2026
Fascization and Antifascism
Position: Postdoctoral fellowship
Location: Institute for Social Research (IfS) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Start date: September 2026, duration of three months
Application deadline: April 20, 2026, 5:00 PM, CET
To honor the legacy of Max Horkheimer, philosopher, sociologist and long-term director of the Institute for Social Research, as one of the key founders of Critical Theory, the IfS is announcing the 2026 Horkheimer Fellowship. The Fellowship’s aim is to support critical scholars across the social sciences and the humanities to pursue a clearly defined research project. This year’s focus is on fascization and antifascism. The growing global influence of authoritarian movements and regressive political projects has prompted a scholarly debate about whether these developments should be understood as the beginning of a new wave of fascization. The aim of the Horkheimer Fellowship 2026 is to advance the debate on how analyses of fascism—including the seminal studies of early Critical Theory—can contribute to our understanding of contemporary societal constellations. We are particularly interested in how contemporary forms of fascization can be countered, and we welcome both theoretical and empirical approaches. In this way, greater visibility for social practices of resistance that are already opposing the authoritarian transformation of social relations around the globe today could be achieved. At the same time, however, it is important to examine the conditions, limits, and contradictions of antifascist practice.
The Fellowship is primarily addressed to international postdoctoral scholars who will be invited to spend a three-month research visit at the Institute for Social Research. Successful applicants can expect a lively and collegial working environment at the IfS, integration into the Institute’s ongoing work as well as institutional support in organizing the research stay (including possible presentations, colloquia, or workshops). An internationally visible publication following the funding period should provide information on the project pursued during the research visit.
Remuneration
Successful applicants will receive a grant of €4,000 per month for their three-month stay at the IfS.
Location
The Institute for Social Research is a renown academic institution located in Frankfurt am Main. The IfS’s organizational and technical infrastructure, including a fully equipped workplace as well as project-related support staff, will be made available to the Fellow for the duration of the Fellowship. The Fellow is expected to be physically present at the Institute for the three months of the Fellowship.
Application and selection procedure
The Fellowship for the period of three months, beginning preferably in September/October 2026, will be awarded on the basis of a written application to the advertised Fellowship program. A committee composed of IfS members will select the successful applicant on the basis of the academic quality of their application and the applicant’s profile, in accordance with the objective of promoting diversity in academia and research.
Applications can only be submitted in English using the application form provided on the IfS website. The selection procedure will be completed in May 2026. Applications and questions regarding the Fellowship should be addressed to: horkheimer-fellowship@ifs-frankfurt.de
Previous Fellows:
2025
Elisa Greco
Green Grabs in Africa: a Class-Theoretical Perspective
This research foregrounds the importance of reinserting class into the analytical framework on green grabs – a term referring to the increase of land enclosure in the Global South which has been driven by environmental policies. While urgent throughout the Global South, this issue is often neglected in North-based environmental debates. The most recent literature highlights activists’ claims that green grabs are a product of ecological imperialism and neocolonialism, which is a primary contradiction in global environmental policies. Within this debate, the proposal is that to overcome this contradiction and propose a radical alternative the category of class must be put centre-stage. This theoretical development – bridging critical agrarian studies and environmental social sciences - proposes class as a theoretical perspective, reinterpreting Marx’s class analysis towards a relational understanding that foregrounds class as the political potential of unity of the majority. Critically engaging with identity politics and degrowth thinking, Issa Shivji’s concept of the working people is put to the test of global realities of uneven and combined development, by looking at increasing social inequality and the related class politics that are apparent through the North-South divide. The objective of this research stay at the IfS is to publish an article that develops class as an analytical and political tool that bridges the neocolonial divide, responding to the division and fragmentation of current environmental and agrarian movements.
2024
Marcel Stoetzler
El concepto de la racialización y la dicotomía del antisemitismo y el racismo
El proyecto aborda la relación entre los conceptos de «racismo» y «antisemitismo». El antisemitismo puede considerarse como una «forma de racismo» (como es el caso en la mayoría de los estudios clásicos sobre el racismo), sin hacer de él «un caso particular» dentro del racismo como «lo general» (y, con ello, trivializarlo), en tanto que «raza» se entienda como un proceso social de «racialización» de forma antiesencialista (o antirrealista) (de acuerdo con la propuesta de los investigadores e investigadoras antirracistas en los años 80). A fin de volver a integrar la crítica al antisemitismo en el estudio de la crítica al racismo, debe recuperarse una comprensión amplia del racismo como forma social cuya aparición no se centra en el código de color y el contexto colonial ni ignora las formas del racismo populistas, aparentemente antihegemónicas o «antielitistas».
2023
Bruna della Torre
The New Organization. Industria de la cultura digital, redes sociales y la propaganda de derecha en Brasil
El proyecto replantea el concepto de industria de la cultura de W. Adorno y Max Horkheimer y los estudios en materia de propaganda de la Escuela de Frankfurt (así como sus sucesores contemporáneos) para analizar cómo el aparato digital de las redes sociales afecta a las democracias en el Sur Global, centrándose en particular en el reciente experimento de Brasil. El objetivo es investigar la relación entre el alce del extremismo de derechas y la industria de la cultura digital. Dentro de este marco, la idea propuesta en el proyecto es ampliar el análisis de esta propaganda relativa a temas específicos, precisándolo con la investigación etnográfica teórica y etnográfica realizada hasta la fecha. Ello implica investigar la agitación que circula principalmente en las redes sociales en torno a la defensa de la libertad (de expresión y de llevar armas), el antifeminismo y la llamada «ideología de género», la propagación de las teorías conspiranoicas y la movilización de los movimientos apocalípticos. El objetivo de esta estancia de investigación en el IfS es escribir un proyecto de libro inspirado en el estudio realizado en la década de los 40 por Leo Löwenthal y Norbert Guterman titulado Profetas del engaño: Un estudio de las técnicas del agitador estadounidense (1948), en el que se analizan las técnicas de la propaganda antidemocrática y sus contenidos.
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