“The Power of Narratives” – 14 Thomas Mann Fellows selected for a residency at the Thomas Mann House in 2027
As part of the Thomas Mann Fellowships, fourteen personalities from the fields of science, media, business and culture will come together in 2027 at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles – the Mann family’s former home in exile – to focus on the annual theme ‘The Power of Narratives’. Topics include how cultural, social, political and economic narratives, shaped by new media and technological developments, influence our identity, society and democracy, and how contemporary, inclusive forms of storytelling can help shape a shared future.
As part of its support for academic research, the Krupp Foundation is funding the two junior fellowships for Esther Heller and Evelyn Kreutzer.
Esther Heller is a poet, literary critic, and experimental filmmaker. During her time in Los Angeles, she aims to create a space for creative and theoretical engagement with Black poetry in translation in the U.S. and Germany.
Evelyn Kreutzer is a media scientist, video essayist, and curator. During her fellowship, she will examine how Los Angeles as a film city and Hollywood as a global cultural myth are changing in the age of AI. She will explore the impact of AI on our trust in the documentary truth of cinema, as well as on L.A.’s status as a site of film-historical memory.
A total of 14 fellows were nominated for 2027 by the independent advisory board of the Thomas Mann House for residencies in the coming year: Journalist Volkan Ağar, writer Nora Bossong, political scientist Saba-Nur Cheema, author Samira El Ouassil, economist Marcel Fratzscher, founder and CEO Nora Sophie Griefahn, literary scholar Esther Heller, editor Thomas Jahn, founder and CEO Tim Janßen, media scientist Evelyn Kreutzer, publicist and educator Meron Mendel, journalist and author Jana Petersen, Mission Lead Tiaji Sio, and legal scholar Dan Wielsch.
In addition, sociologists Eva Illouz and Steffen Mau will be visiting the Thomas Mann House as Honorary Fellows in 2027.
Through these fellowships, the Thomas Mann House aims to become a space where, in the spirit of Thomas Mann, debates on fundamental contemporary and future issues on both sides of the Atlantic – and with an eye to the Pacific – can be initiated.
The Krupp Foundation, the Berthold Leibinger Foundation and the German Federal Foreign Office make the Thomas Mann Fellowships possible. The non-profit organisation Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House is funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Goethe-Institut.