Dr. Rouven Symank is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence. He holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI), an MSc from the London School of Economics (LSE), and an MA from Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2021 to 2022, he was a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley. His latest paper is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review.

Rouven’s work has been awarded the Charles V European Award Research Grant and scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung). As part of his research, Rouven has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Namibia, and Mexico. He was a Dahrendorf Fellow at St Anthony’s College, Oxford, and has gained work experience in management consulting and as a Carlo-Schmid Fellow at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in New York. 

At SCRIPTS, Rouven works on the project “Objects from Afar and Sustainable Liberal Identity: The Contestation of Material Representation in National Museums of the Global North.” Together with Philipp Lepenies, he recently organized a two-day international workshop and is currently overseeing the publication of the contributing papers in a peer-reviewed special issue. Rouven is also preparing a book manuscript titled “Object Diplomacy: The Politics of Cultural Restitution.”