The Center for Advanced Studies at LMU Munich (CAS) is offering research stays for the summer semester 2021 as a "Junior Researcher in Residence". The program is particularly aimed at academic staff members and scholarship recipients from the fields of humanities, cultural studies and social sciences at LMU Munich who, within their qualification level, seek a wider university and professional audience on the one hand, and who require optimal conditions for advancing or completing their research projects on the other hand. The status of a Junior Researcher in Residence includes a workspace in the Seestraße building and the use of the extensive resources of CAS. Application deadline is 13 September 2020. more

"Reading the Mind in the Eyes" is not only an important ability during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a psychological test that is widely used to measure our understanding of what others feel and think. In this test, people are shown photographs of human faces that depict only the area around the eyes. As a Junior Researcher in Residence, Christopher Osterhaus investigates the development of children's ability to decode feelings and thoughts from limited information such as minimal facial cues. Together with his visiting fellows Sandra Bosacki and Henry Wellman, he studies how to improve measures of this and other advanced aspects of children’s social cognition. more

Barbara Ercolano (astrophysics) and Klaus H. Goetz (political science) are spokespersons of the two new CAS Research Groups. Barbara Ercolano's group will react to the latest observation programs that have demonstrated the existence of an overwhelming richness of extra-solar planetary systems; the CAS Research Group, which includes Philip Armitage (Stony Brook University), Cathie Clarke (Cambridge), Xuening Bai (Tsinghua University) as well as Doug Johnstone (Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre), will develop photoionization and thermal models covering an area stretching from the inside of the disk to its atmospheres and winds. Unpredictable, abrupt changes – sometimes described as turbulences – are the focus of research to be conducted by Klaus H. Götz. The Research Group will particularly investigate the question of whether extraordinary dynamics in both national and global politics are becoming increasingly frequent and what causes them. The group includes Keith Dowding (Canberra), Michael Howlett (Simon Fraser) and André Kaiser (Cologne). more