Dr. Benjamin Bunk
Benjamin Bunk is a postdoctoral researcher in the MeDiMi project “Human Rights as Reference Point of Professional Ethics for Social-Educational Practice in Migration Societies”. He completed his dissertation on “Self-formation in Social Movements” at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. After holding a coordinating position at the Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research in Jena, he joined the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt in 2015. With a Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he spent research and field stays at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and the University of Helsinki (Finland) from 2018 to 2019. Since then, he has been a Research Associate in the area of educational science and youth studies at the University of Giessen. His research focuses on the areas of (I) social movements and pedagogical movement research, (II) political education and education for sustainable development, (III) international youth work, (IV) postcolonial social work and progressive education, as well as (V) human rights. He is also interested in the history of education, “Bildungstheorien”, and social theory, and has an expertise in qualitative research methods (hermeneutics, biographical analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis). He has a regional focus on Brazil, especially on the landless movement, urban garbage collection initiatives and the World Social Forum.
