Collegium Helveticum
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Fellowship journeys

Shaping the Trajectory of My Career

Since fall 2024, Hannes Bajohr has been assistant professor in the Department of German at the University of California, Berkeley. Here, Hannes reflects on what has motivated him to apply for a fellowship at the Collegium and how it shaped the trajectory of his career.

Before starting his fellowship at the Collegium, Hannes Bajohr had just begun to explore a new topic: authorship in the age of artificial intelligence. The opportunity to apply for a fellowship at the Collegium came at a pivotal moment in his career, allowing him to fully immerse himself in research that was still in its early stages. “During my year at the Collegium, I made significant progress on my work,” says Hannes. “The fellowship granted me the time and space to focus on a single topic.”

Because of his expertise in large language models, such as ChatGPT, and AI more generally, Hannes also appeared as an expert on television and radio as well as in various online and print media during his fellowship. “Beyond working on my project, the fellowship helped me grow in many ways,” Hannes reflects. “I learned to work and communicate across disciplines, forging valuable connections in Switzerland and internationally. Perhaps most rewarding was being part of a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of scholars, where I gained new perspectives from colleagues in different fields.”

Today, he is an assistant professor of German at the University of California at Berkeley, continuing the research on artificial intelligence and literature that he was able to deepen during his time at the Collegium. As Hannes explains, “The fellowship was not only instrumental in my academic development but also in shaping the trajectory of my career.”

Hannes and his research featured in the Collegium Helveticum’s video portrait. Film by David Bucheli