Heide Barrenechea is head of the Humboldt Lab since March 2023. She coordinates all the activities (exhibitions and related programs and formats) and is responsible for the further development of the exhibition and event venue as well as for networking between the actors at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the partners at the Humboldt Forum, and external partners.

Previously, she was responsible for the “Volkswagen Art4All” program at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart as well as an emergency aid program funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs (BKM) and served as commercial project manager of “lab.Bode. Initiative for Strengthening Outreach Work in Museums” (a joint program of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). Heide Barrenechea studied art history, sociology and psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University of Heidelberg and was a scholarship holder at the DFG Graduate Program “Das Wissen der Künste” (Berlin University of the Arts).

Since January 2024, Dr. Anna-Lisa Dieter has been a curator at the Humboldt Lab at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Anna-Lisa Dieter studied literature at universities in Germany, France and the USA, specialising in French literature. She received her doctorate with a thesis on the writer Stendhal and has taught literature at the universities of München and Konstanz, among others.

In 2018 she started working at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden. From 2019 to 2023, she was a curator at BIOTOPIA, the new natural history museum in München. She writes regularly for various newspapers, magazines and publishing houses. Her latest book Susan Sontag. 100 Seiten was published by Reclam in 2022.

Since November, 2021, Bastian Herbst is a Curator for Outreach at the Humboldt Lab. His responsibilities include the development of the Lab’s educational programmes as well as events and new cooperations.

Bastian Herbst studied modern and contemporary history, political science, and public law at the Universities of Freiburg, Rennes and Basel, earning an M.A. in 2009. He was a researcher of the DFG-funded researchers’ group „The Military and the Media during the 20th century“. His research led him to various research institutions and archives, particularly in the United Kingdom and France.

From 2019-21 he worked at the German Historical Museum, Berlin, as a research assistant in the department of education. There, he developed didactic programmes and formats for numerous temporary exhibitions, with a focus on intercultural, participatory and inclusive approaches. Additionally, Bastian Herbst developed new digital concepts, including virtual tours through the museum and online workshops for students.

Max Illner is working as a technical curator for the Humboldt Lab since October 2021

He studied Philosophy, History and Art History at the Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Since many years he is working freelance in the field of exhibition techniques and project production. From 2019 to 2021 he worked as an exhibition technician at the Futurium.

Caspar Pichner has been working as a scenographer at the Humboldt Lab since 2023.

He has been working internationally for ten years as an independent scenographer, exhibition technician and project manager. Since April 2019 he is working in exhibition design and operation at the Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, where he is primarily responsible for exhibitions and events at the Tieranatomisches Theater.

Since 2020, Anja Walther has been working as Museologist at the Humboldt Lab.

She studied museology and has since worked for several national scientific and cultural institutions. She was, for instance, research associate for the DFG-research project „Universitätssammlungen in Deutschland: Untersuchungen zu Bestand und Geschichte” at the Zentrum für Kulturtechnik of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, later she became head of the image archive of the Museen der Stadt Dresden. Her focus of activity lies at the interface between exhibition organization and digital as well as analogue collection and information management.

Eileen Klingner has been working at the ZfK and the Humboldt Lab since July 2025.

She is a Master Student in Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and visited Seoul National University (South Korea) for studies in Anthropology. Since her undergraduate studies she has worked for several years in various positions as a student assistant at the Department for Cultural History and Theory – notably within the professorships for ‘Cultural Techniques and History of Knowledge’ and ‘History of Knowledge and Culture’.

Karoline Winter is working as a curatorial assistant at the Humboldt Lab since September 2024.

After studying Sociocultural Studies in Frankfurt (Oder) and Kyiv she has been working for several literary publishing houses. Since 2022 she is a freelance editor based in Berlin.

Since October 2023, Roksolana Ludyn has been working as Assistant Curator for Outreach at the Humboldt Lab, providing support in the planning and organisation of events and outreach formats, among other things.

She studied cultural sciences at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy University. In Ukraine, she worked in the fields of education and event organisation after completing her studies. After the war began, Roksolana Ludyn moved to Berlin. She worked as a freelance educator in children’s museums, the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art. Here, among other things, she organised outreach projects to involve the Ukrainian refugee community in the museums.