Student platform

NTS students
© M. Stein

On this platform, our students and graduates can present their academic profiles and research projects to a wider audience. Currently, 14 first-year students are enrolled in the MA National & Transnational Studies, and 16 study in their second year.

Students who wish to create an entry are welcome to submit their drafts here.

  • First year students

    Simindokht Rahmani is a 36-year-old mom of two cats from Iran. She studied English Literature and Applied Linguistics In Iran and has been an English Teacher for more than 15 years. Her research interests (so far!) are Sociolinguistics, Cultural Linguistics, and Assessment Literacy. She loves biking, good coffee, and languages - among other things. 

  • Second year students

    Laura Gálvez is 29 years old and was born in Colombia, South America. She has a BA degree in psychology and speaks fluent English, French, German, and Spanish. Previously, she has experience as a psychologist for early childhood and has also been an English and Spanish teacher in different national and international schools. With the Master in National and Transnational Studies, she hopes to broaden her job prospects and to be able to learn more about culture, literature and languages.

    Melanie Münninghoff graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Arts and Cultural Studies in 2022 from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In her studies, she did a minor in European Culture and National Identities and focused her research on art and ideology. Because of her interests in the EU, cosmopolitanism, art, and ideology, she saw it as a natural continuation to study National and Transnational Studies at Uni Münster.

    Tsendpurev Tsegmid is an artist-researcher, curator and cultural project manager from Mongolia, who specialises in practice-based contemporary art research, conceptual art, photographic practice & artist mentoring. She holds a PhD (2013) from Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, UK, and has taught at Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture and Vanjil Art Institute at postgraduate levels. She is seeking to evolve beyond her specialisation, expanding her research interests to Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Nationalism and Migration Studies and bolstering her chances to take part in and to lead interdisciplinary research projects.  

  • Alumni

    LinkedIn

    Both former and current students, as well as staff members who have taught in the NTS program are warmly invited to join our LinkedIn group here to promote stronger connections within the community.

    Alumni Profiles

    Whilst the MA has been going since 2008, the “student” page was launched in its current form only in 2016. Our list of Alumni profiles is not comprehensive, therefore, but will expand as current students graduate.

    Maryna Kostyk
    I graduated in the summer of 2017. I came to Münster from Ukraine, where I majored in the English language and literature. In the NTS program, I decided to focus on Cultural and Literary Studies. This consequently led to me writing a thesis titled "American Life through German Lenses: A Transnational Reading into the Vlogosphere." I truly enjoyed having a good choice of courses in each module, as well as a possibility to take classes from other university departments in the external module. In my case, it was the Language Center where I studied advanced German and the Faculty of Social Sciences where I took a course on Globalization. The two years I spent in Münster were certainly the best of all my student years. In addition to participating in a well-rounded academic program, I had a chance to get an unforgettable experience as part of an international NTS team.

    Theresa Krampe
    During my two years in the NTS program, I greatly benefited from the program's interdisciplinary and international orientation. With students from very diverse cultural and academic backgrounds contributing their individual perspectives, class discussions were particularly enriching. The broad scope of the program may seem a little overwhelming at first but also allows students to branch out into other disciplines and pursue their very own research interests. In my case, this resulted in a complete change in direction: I ended up researching- and of course playing- video games for my MA thesis. Münster being a small town, it does not offer the glamour or cultural scene of, say, Berlin or Munich. But I feel at home here, which is why I am happy to stay a little longer as a lecturer (Wiss. Mitarbeiterin) affiliated to the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies

    Courtney Moffett-Bateau
    MA thesis: "Black Beauty Aesthetics: Combating American Beauty Constructions of the Past With Art of the Present"

    Jessica Sanfilippo Schulz
    M.A. thesis: "Judging a Book by its Author: Publishers’ Strategies of Representing Biographical Details of Third Culture Authors"

    Oliver Reynolds
    Oliver is from Sheffield, UK. He completed his BA in Geography with International Study at the University of Manchester. His BA thesis focused on the British migrant experience in Singapore. Other interests include refugees, nationalism, identity, geopolitics and tourism.

    Jennifer Janke
    Jennifer completed her BA in Journalism at Hochschule Bremen and studied one semester abroad at Manipal University, India. As a freelance filmmaker, she has dealt with different topics concerning migration and integration. She focussed on Literary and Cultural Studies with a particular interest in the news media.

    Anne Laura Penning
    Anne Laura Penning studied Comparative Linguistic, Literary Studies and Translation at Saarland University before finishing the NTS program in 2023. She has attended Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, for a semester abroad and completed a Gender Certificate at Saarland University. Her MA thesis focused on the concept of chosen families in the Netflix series Sense8 and her research interests include Queer and Gender Studies, Kinship Studies, Transnationalism and Science Fiction.

    Can Çakır
    Can studied political science and public administration in French and English at Marmara University, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon and Universitat Pompeu Fabra before finishing the NTS program. Following his graduation, he has been enrolled in the Graduate School Practices of Literature at the University of Münster and joined the PTTS team as a research associate and lecturer.

    Johanna Mack
    Johanna is from Lünen, Germany. She studied Applied Literary and Cultural Studies, Journalism and French at Technische Universität Dortmund and Ruhr Universität Bochum. She studied one semester at University of Worcester in UK. Other experiences abroad include Summer Schools in India and Cambodia and journalistic research trips to Kiev and Jordan. Johanna works as an editor for the local newspaper Ruhr Nachrichten and for the online magazine on developments in journalism, European Journalism Observatory. 

    Allison McDaniel
    Allison is an American student from Mississippi. She graduated summa cum laude and now holds a BA in Sociology with minors in both English and German from the University of Southern Mississippi (2014-2016). Within her university’s Honors program, she has had the opportunity to study abroad in Jamaica, London, and Vienna. Within the NTS program, she reigned her focus more on aspects of culture. Her interests include gender, cultural norms/deviance, and forms of verbal/nonverbal communication. Particularly, she studied how these intersect with transnational hobbies such as videogames.

    Yasmina Talhaui
    Yasmina is from Dortmund, Germany. She completed her BA in English Philology and Communication Science at the University of Münster, Germany (2014-2017) and graduated from the NTS program focusing on Literary and Cultural Studies.

    Odukwu Umachiyam Amehka
    Odukwu is a Nigerian and studied Education Management during her bachelor program. While studying in the MA NTS program, she focussed on understanding the concept of cultural identity in a globalized world including the effects of culture contact.

    Eeva Langeveld
    Eeva is a recent graduate of the MA National and Transnational Studies at the University of Münster. Currently, she is working on an auto-ethnographic documentary, for the MA Social Anthropology, on the topic of Karelian cultural memory in Finland. Her academic interests lie with memory studies, postcolonial history, and children’s literature.

    Gabriella Wong
    Gabriella originally hails from Hong Kong, having previously completed a B.A. in Art History at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Finishing NTS in 2019 in book studies and writing a lot about trains, she stayed in Münster and now works for a Swiss blockchain company.

  • MA theses

    Below, you can find a selection of MA theses that were completed here:

    Attitudes of Russians towards varieties of English

    White appropriation of Jamaican Creole in reggae music

    Language Choice in Social Media Marketing in Hong Kong and the Perception of Brands and Products

    Sense8. Reimagining the "Found Family" in Science Fiction

    The Critique of Neoliberal Ideology in Marxist Utopian Writing

    Attitudes towards Chinese, English and Pinyin in Chinese Advertisements

    Comparative attitudinal study of colloquial Singapore English among citizens and non-citizen residents

    Adapting Shakespeare in the Soviet Union during the Cold War Period

    Resisting Gender Stereotypes in Horizon Zero Dawn: How a Ludus Game Challenges Perceptions

    British South Asian Film and the construction of Home and Belonging

    Interpretations of the Third Space and Hybridity in the Short Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri

    The Slave Mother and the American Nation - Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Toni Morrison's Beloved
     
    The Doubling, Dividing and Interchanging of the Self in James Cameron's ''Avatar''

    Border Sliding Through Liminal Space: Negotiating Postcolonial Histories Through Transient Image and Sound in the Live Cinéma of Petites Planètes

    Survival and Betrayal: Identity, Embodiment, and Difference in Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

    Building Utopia Beyond Earth:  Exploring Societal Models in Space Colonies through Utopian Literature
     
    Security and freedom - negotiating national belonging? The 2009 elections in Germany

    Poetic politics: May Ayim and Linton Kwesi Johnson challenging the racially exclusive nation
     
    Narrating the Kanaka Maoli Self - Neo-Coloniality, Subalternity, and Indigenous Historiography in Contemporary Hawai!
     
    Weder Mexikanisch noch Amerikanisch: Stereotypische Darstellungen von Chicana-Frauen in Amerikanischen main-stream Filmen.
     
    Cultural Aspects of Nation-building and National Identity in Vanuatu
     
    (M)Other and Militant, Munition and Make-up: Discursive Constructions of the Female LTTE Militant Figure
     
    Black Beauty Aesthetics: Combating American Beauty Constructions of the Past With Art of the Present
     
    Sojourn Heroism - Identity Negotiation in the Memoirs of Two Former Peace Corps China Volunteers
     
    Representations of Study Abroad in Film: A Psychological Perspective
     
    Your Dream, My Nightmare: Buchi Emecheta's The Rape of Shavi and Ben Okri's Astoristing the Gods as Postcolonial Utopias

    National Identity, Literature, and Collective Transgenerational Trauma in Chechen History

    Shooting Back: The Colombian Drug War in Birds of Passage
     
    Self, Identity and Hispanic Youth in U. S. Public Schools

    Negotiation of Cultural and National Identity: The Role of Carnival in the Work of Espinet and Lovelace

    Conviviality in the Postcolony: A Case of Three African Novels

    Voicing Integration: A Comparative Qualitative Study of the (Self-)Perception of Integration among FörderschülerInnen and in German Government Representations

    Sudanese British Fiction in Transition: Postcolonial Re-Inventions of Home and Abroad in the Works of Tayeb Salih and Leila Aboulela

    Mediating the Rugby Nation: The Construction of New Zealand's National Identity in Newspaper Coverage.

    Digital Diaspora - New Media and the (Re-)Making of a Palestinian Homeland

    Voices of the Authors: The Empowering Potential of Urban Fiction

    Social Media Mentality: Diminishing the Power of Popular Culture in the age of Communicative Capitalism

    Judging a Book by its Author: Publishers´ Strategies of Representing Biographical Details of Third Culture Authors

    Images of Germany: Personal Experience Accounts from American Residents

    Migrant Happiness in Sam Selvon’s Moses Ascending

    Multifarious Oppression and Identity in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Trilogy

    Contested Politics of Ethnic Identity: The Tamang in Nepal

    Urban Encounters from a Migrant Perspective: The Flaneur in Teju Cole's Open City.

    Poland in Transformation: A Postcolonial Study

    Imagining Communities During the American Civil War: The Represenation of the Draft Riots in the New York Times

    Immigration Rhetoric in the Public Controversy Surrounding AZ S.B. 1070

    A comparative analysis of daughter-mother relations in transnational adoptee literature: "Airports", "flights" and "open spaces" in Korean adoptee life writing

    Murder She Narrates: Feminism and the True Crime Documentary in Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer

    Inverted Wrecks—Retroactive Castaways Jenichiro Oyabe’s Crusoe and the Temporalities of World Literature

    Negotiating the German - American Experience: Cultural Hybridity in the novels The Master Butchers singing Club by Louise Erdrich and The Vision of Emmy Blau by Ursula Hegi

    From "Yellow Peril" to "Model Minority"

    Mediating the “Arab Spring”: A Comparative Study on the Role of the Conventional Mass Media and New Online Media in Jordan, 2011-2013

    Ghosts of the Haunted Past? Native American Gothic Features in Select Novels by Louise Erdrich

    Identity Formation in Contemporary Iranian-American Diasporic Novels

    Women Writing Men. The construction of Black Masculinity through Black male focalizers by Black Canadian women writers

    Tutejsas'c' as the Third Space of Belarusian National Identity: A Postcolonial Reading of the "Here" in Narratives of Belarusian National Identification

    The Media Coverage on Female Marriage Migrants from Southeast Asia in Taiwan and Germany - A Comparative Analysis.

    Forming Taiwanese Collective Memory in Historical Fictions: Representations of the 228 Incident and the White Terror in A City of Sadness and Detention

    Narrating the Nation, Remembering Yugoslavia: How Narratives and Counter-Narratives Are Exhibited in Museums of ‘Post’-Yugoslav Nation-States

    Second Language Acquisition by Iranian Transmigrants in the UK

    Queering the Irish in Breakfast on Pluto

    Indian Borders in Contemporary Personal Narrative Non-Fiction: The Border Aesthetics of Samarth Mahajan’s Borderlands and Suchitra Vijayan’s Midnight’s Borders

    “Hating Greta”: Gender and Race in the Media Discourse on the Fridays for Future Movement

    'Chicana' Identity in Jaime Hernandez' Love and Rockets. Comparing Race, Sexuality and Class in the Comic Series to Chicana Feminist Discourse

    Migration Museum and the Nation-State: Germany's Loss or Gain?

    On Their Own Terms: Legal Translation and Interpretation in Shaping Public Space in Post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong
     
    The Straight Mestiza: Women in post-Anzaldua Chicana Literature

    Xenophobia under the Rainbow - Migrants in Post-Apartheid South African Fiction

    The Notion of Home and Belonging of the Contemporary African Diasporic Writing in the USA: Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie and the Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

    Diasporic Constructions in Queer Film

    And here, in fact, we are: Blank space in contemporary cartographic and archival practices.
    Taking a Transnational Perspective: Visual Tropes and Visual Rhetoric in Shaun Tan's Picture Books The Rabbits, The Lost Thing and The Arrival

    Conceptions of Indigeneity in Thomas King's work

    Monstrosity in Search of Humanity: Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Popular Adaptions, and the Ambiguity of Islamic Fundamentalism in Post-9/11 Representation

    Ukraine's National Identity in the Media. Representations of Ukraine Before and After the 2014 Presidential Elections

    Racial Melancholia in Asian American Literature

    Advocating Indigenous Self-Determination: Reading Larissa Behrendt's Home
     
    From East to West: Transnational Migration in Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories

    OFNEO-MUSLIMS AND DRAMAQUEENS: Staging Female German-Turkish Identities In Feridun Zaimoglu's And Günter Senkel's Schwarze Jungfrauen (2006)

    Comparing Ethno-Racial Systems and Representations: Mexican Americans and Turkish Germans

    Data Rights and Migration: EU Regulation of Artificial Intelligence and Vulnerable Populations

    Manipulation of the Linguistic Form and Orientalist Discourse in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha

    Documenting American Life: Walker Evans's Photography for the Farm Security Administration

    The Year of the Commie Smasher: Analysis of American Patriotism through the Captain America Comics of 1954

    From Uncompleted Passage to Endless Transition: A Fictionalization of Benjamin's Concept of History in Anna Seghers's Transit

    My(Self) between Dos Lenguas: Code-switching and the Dominican-American "I" in Julia Álvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Angie Cruz's Soledad and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

    Attitudes of Armenian and German students towards Native and Non-Native Varieties of English

    To Boldly Believe – New Age Spirituality in Star Trek: Voyager

    Walking the Streets, Talking the Space: Narrating Social Polyvalence by Excavating the Urban Space of Berlin with Revolutionary Berlin Tours