5 Questions to...Johanna Seibert

8 April 2022

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, current work, what motivates them, and about their favourite written artefacts. In this episode, we talk to Johanna Seibert, who is the coordinator of Equal Opportunity at CSMC.

Johanna Seibert, please tell us a little about yourself.

Academically speaking, I am rooted in the humanities. I hold a PhD in American Studies and I am just about to publish my book on African Caribbean newspapers in the early 19th century. I received both my PhD and my Master’s degree at the Obama Institute at Universität Mainz and spent longer periods in the U.S., the UK, and Jamaica to study and later to do archival research—which I thoroughly enjoyed!

During my time in Mainz, the needs of early career researchers and questions of equal opportunity were of particular concern to me. Before getting started with my own PhD project, I had worked as a research assistant for the Senate’s Equal Opportunity Officer at Universität Mainz. Also, I was a member of the Gutenberg Council for Young Researchers and the Gutenberg Academy, both providing a forum for exchange with and among early career researchers across disciplines. It was this interdisciplinary conversation I benefitted from most, both personally and as an academic.

In 2019 then, I opened a new chapter and moved to Hamburg to start my current position as coordinator of Equal Opportunity.

How did you find your way to CSMC?

I had heard about CSMC before, first in the context of my own archival research and later when Universität Hamburg acquired the status of University of Excellence. Hardly surprising then, I was instantly interested when I saw the job ad and learnt that the Cluster ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ was looking for someone with a background in the humanities and an international profile to fill the position of coordinator of Equal Opportunity. At that time, my scholarship by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Scholarship Foundation) expired and I had to make the fundamental decision as to whether I want to stay in or to leave academia. In the end, this was fairly clear to me; my position now combines the best of two worlds. As a coordinator, I still work in an academic environment, but can engage in structural and strategic processes as well. So, you can imagine that I was rather excited when I received the call from Hamburg.

Equal Opportunity is a major topic but also a very abstract term – what does a working day of an equal opportunity coordinator typically look like?

Let’s even start before and clarify again what we actually mean by Equal Opportunity, which, I agree, is not particularly tangible. As a coordinator of Equal Opportunity, I am mainly concerned with three fields of action, namely gender equality, diversity, and the compatibility of family, care, and academic career. Members of the Cluster who have questions and concerns in any of those fields can always reach out to me and see me for instance during my weekly office hour; once things are back to normal, also in-person at CSMC again. Generally, the direct contact to researchers is essential to my work, which is why I always try to connect with new members on a regular basis to learn about their needs in terms of equal opportunity. Apart from those individual concerns and sessions, I also organise events such as our annual panel on ‘International Arrival’ that invites international scholars to reflect on and exchange about their experiences here in Hamburg and that allows us to gain critical input, too. For me, the social and cultural program I put together with Merryl Rebello every semester is likewise a great way to network with people at CSMC and to see where and how we can help. I feel that socialising is much needed these days and I am happy to put people in touch.

But let’s return to your question about a typical working day for me. Currently, our one-year mentoring program at the Cluster is high on my agenda. This is a measure implemented to support female researchers in the Postdoc phase with regard to career planning and development. The first cycle is now coming to an end in April and we will officially wrap up the program with two events, one being a workshop for the mentees to reconsider and assess the past year. In addition, we host a hybrid networking event for both mentees and mentors. My job here is to coordinate those sessions and to prepare the workshops together with our professional trainers in the program. This is a crucial moment for me as a coordinator, too, and I am already curious to hear from the mentees about their insights and to get their feedback.

Gender equality is hardly a short-term goal. To achieve the equal representation of women in the highest status group needs time and collective effort.

What do you consider the most rewarding aspect about your job and what’s most difficult about it?

What feels particularly rewarding to me in general is the exchange with researchers from very different backgrounds, academic systems, and disciplines. The diversity of perspectives and experiences assembled here at the Centre enriches my work as a coordinator, too. Of course, the opportunity to coordinate the mentoring program at the Cluster was a special highlight in the past year, not least because this gave me the chance to work closely with a group of female researchers over a longer period of time, to get to know them more closely, and to see how they developed individually and as part of the group. To me, this was one of many great outcomes over all—the strong relationship between the mentees.

To the second part of the question: I’d rather speak of challenges. Gender equality, for instance, is hardly a short-term goal. To achieve the equal representation of women especially in the highest status group needs time and collective effort. This is probably pertinent to equal opportunity management in general: You need a good mix of both persistence and patience.

What’s your own relation to the research that is being done at CSMC? Have you come across specific written artefacts or research topics you found particularly intriguing?

As I stated earlier, I am an early Americanist myself. Accordingly, I have done archival research already, mainly on periodical print, but I also encountered manuscripts in my work. I am for instance interested in petitions of enslaved people in the pre-emancipation Caribbean, in female authorship and the materiality of signatures. Studying early Caribbean newspapers, I came across handwritten annotations, directions, and insertions, drawing my attention to the interplay between handwriting, periodical print, and materials like paper. So, I can very much relate to the material-specific research done here at CSMC. As someone working in and with colonial archives, I specifically appreciate the critical endeavor of the Ethics Working Group. 

In my position at the Cluster, I am naturally intrigued by gender-related questions, in written artefact studies as a field and as a category of analysis in research on manuscripts. The seminal work of Professor Cécile Michel is a primary example I would like to mention. The talk she gave at CSMC last year on the intersections between gender and cuneiform studies was not only highly stimulating, yet more so particularised the ways in which those fields can cross-fertilise each other.