Team
Çiğdem Göymen
Acting Manager
Çiğdem Göymen studied English language & literature and Romance languages in Freiburg, and also completed a Film & TV Studies course in London. Even at an early stage of her studies, she undertook a stage-direction internship at the Choreographisches Tanztheater Freiburg, run by Pavel Mikulastik, and spent the following years working, among other stints, in the Dramaturgy department of the Pretty Ugly Dance Company, under the artistic direction of Amanda Miller.
In 2000, she graduated with a Magister Artium in Freiburg and moved to Istanbul, where she designed the Music, Film and Visual Arts programmes at the Goethe Institute in Istanbul until 2009, before being appointed Assistant Director of the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair.
She returned to Germany in 2010 and worked as a freelancer, with roles including script proof-reader for the Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and the Komische Oper Berlin, as well as completing an advanced film-production course at the Institut für Schauspiel, Film- und Fernsehberufe (ISFF) in Berlin Mitte. In 2012, she joined the Hamburg-based team of film-maker Fatih Akin, who had been a friend and professional connection since 2003.
She took charge of managing the newly established Folkwang Institute for Pop Music in Bochum in the spring of 2014, and has been the Institute’s Acting Manager since January 2020.
Bernhard Eichner
Study Programme Co-ordinator
In addition to this main role as a Folkwang Professor of Music Theory, specialising in arrangement / instrumentation / composition / production, Bernhard Eichner has also played a leading role in designing the Master of Popular Music course. As Study Programme Co-ordinator, he further develops the course by planning content and linking this with other disciplines at the Folkwang University of the Arts.
His work has also included interdisciplinary orchestral projects with the Duisburg Philharmonic during the Capital of Culture Year 2010 and the 300-year anniversary of Duisburg Harbour in 2016, as well as orchestrations and compositions for film/TV, including the theme music for the Deutscher Filmpreis, played by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle.
Vera Timmerberg
Institutional Board/Chair
Vera Timmerberg heads the University Development department at the Folkwang University of the Arts, and represents the university on the City of Essen’s Cultural Advisory Council. Together with Prof. Bernhard Eichner, she founded the Institute for Popular Music, and has been the chair of the Institutional Board ever since. Vera Timmerberg has a degree in educational science, majoring in cultural work, and spent many years working as a lecturer in empirical cultural research at the Department of Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim. She was also head of the Mercator Foundation’s Cultural Education Cluster of Excellence in the Capital of Culture Year Ruhr 2010 project. She created and ran the Rote Liebe (Red Love) music club in Essen from 1992 to 1997.
