Dr. Rouven Symank is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence. He will join Harvard University as a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow in Fall 2025.

Rouven’s research combines international political theory with qualitative methods to analyze solidarity, justice, and the challenges facing liberal democracy. His latest research on solidarity appeared in the American Political Science Review (APSR).

Rouven earned his 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. He held visiting researcher positions at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley.

His field research in Senegal, Namibia, and Mexico provides a practical perspective that informs his conceptual work. Beyond academia, he has gained professional experience in management consulting and international policy, notably serving as a Carlo-Schmid Fellow at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in New York.

Rouven has been awarded a Dahrendorf Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford, the Charles V European Award Research Grant, and scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung).

At SCRIPTS, he contributes to the project titled “Objects from Afar and Sustainable Liberal Identity.” Together with Prof. Dr. Philipp Lepenies, he recently organized a two-day international workshop and is currently overseeing the publication of its contributing papers in a peer-reviewed special issue.

He serves as the Principal Investigator with Dr. Alexandra Paulin-Booth on the Berlin University Alliance-funded project “The Restitution Think Tank,” and is preparing a book manuscript on the political stakes of cultural restitution that highlights how returning looted artifacts mirrors shifts in international norms and debates on global justice.