The art historian Dr. Elisha Masemann (University of Auckland, New Zealand) is a fellow of the WiRe programme (Women in reasearch) at the Centre for Advanced Study from 1 May to 31 July 2023. Elisha Masemann received her PhD from the University of Auckland in 2018 with a thesis titled “Art in the City, the City in Art”, where she closely analysed artistic responses to contentious urban conditions since the mid-twentieth century. Her research field is contemporary urban and visual art, with an interest in the intersections of art, architecture, urbanism and socio-cultural theory in the context of today’s rapidly changing cities. In Münster, she will analyse an emerging aspect of this field, the “smart city” by way of artistic praxis. On 11 May 2023, she gave an insight into her research with a lecture at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster as part of the event “An Evening for Ursula Frohne”.

WiRe is a fellowship program for international female postdoctoral researchers at the University of Münster. The WiRe program pays respect to the challenges of women in research, focusing on female postdocs, who have to face the challenges of combining work and family. In 2018, the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) awarded the International Office of the University of Münster for the fellowship program in the “International Research Marketing” ideas competition.