Alumna Project at HIAS

AI in Refugee Status Determination

During her time as HIAS Alumna Fellow, Karolin Machtans will research current developments regarding the use of artificial intelligence in refugee status determination. Additionally, she will use her time to reconnect with Hamburg-based colleagues who share her interest in refugee law and literature, in order to organize future events and co-taught workshops.

Biography

Karolin Machtans is Associate Professor and Chair of German Studies at Connecticut College. She is the author of Zwischen Wissenschaft und autobiographischem Projekt: Saul Friedländer und Ruth Klüger (2009); co-editor, with Martin Ruehl, of Hitler – Films from Germany: History, Cinema, and Politics since 1945 (2012); co-editor, with Helga Druxes and Alexandar Mihailovic, of the first volume of criticism in English dedicated to Iranian-German author and scholar of Islam Navid Kermani (2016); and co-editor, together with David Coury, of the first volume in English about Iraqi-German author Abbas Khider (2021). She has published numerous articles in the fields of Holocaust studies as well as refugee and migration studies and is currently working on a new research project focusing on the representation of asylum interviews in contemporary German literature of refuge. Before joining Connecticut College in 2012, she was a Visiting Lecturer of German at the University of Cambridge (2006-2010) and Assistant Professor of German at California Polytechnic State University (2010-2012).

Karolin Machtans’ research focuses on refugee and forced migration studies, language and accent discrimination, minorities in Germany, Holocaust studies, German colonialism, 20th- and 21st-century German literature and film and post-1945 German history and culture.

Karolin Machtans’ Alumna HIAS Fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by Universität Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.