Team

Isabel Aguirre Siemer (Germany/ Spain): Head of the the organisation “No Boundaries - Literature . Music . Arts“ and Freelance event manager.
 Isabel studied Spanish, English, Italian Literature in Berlin, in Salamanca/ Spain, and Cagliari/ Italy before she started working as freelance cultural manager at the Poetry Festival Berlin (Haus für Poesie) in 2005. She also collaborated in working with the international and multilingual poetry platform lyrikline.org. Together with Xiao Kaiyu and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (South Africa), she edited the Publication “No Serenity Here. An Anthology of African Poetry in Amharic, English, French, Arabic and Portuguese” (Peking 2010). She has organized events such as "Translating Hip Hop“ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and was in charge of the German edition of the internationally renowned project "Poetry Bombing / Poetry Rain“ by the Chilean group Casagrande which dropped 100.000 poems over the Lustgarten in Berlin. She has curated and coordinated the project "SPOKEN WOR:L:DS. Nairobi - Berlin" during 2013 and 2014. Since 2018 she works as freelance Accountant for Musethica e.V., and for Diehl+Ritter gUG in the project Tanzkongress 2019.

Daniel "El Congo" Allen (Cuba) began to study trumpet in the music School in Holguin (eva) at the age of 9, after 4 years in the Music Conservatory (Holguin) and then In Havana in the Music University (ISA), where he got the chance to meet Herbie Hancock, Nicholas Payton, Danilo Perez, Kenny Baron. Donald Harrison invited him to study in the school where he was teaching in New Orleans but because Visa complications he decided to go to Europe where he shared the stage with many Artist like Eath Wind and Fire, Lauren Hill, Zap Mama, Dave Brubeck, los Van Van, Raul Paz, UB 40, Sargento Garcia, Jimi Tenor, Max Herre, Morgan Heritage, Sly & Robbie, Jean Paul, Marilyn Mason, Buju Banton, Eric Clapton and many others.

Since winter 2002 he started to play with PATRICE and the Shashamani Band, touring around Eurpe in different Radio shows, MTV videos and top Europeans Festivals like Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, Sommerjam, St. Gallen-Roskilde, Spain- PellePelle, Paris- Elysee-Montmartre, Brussells/Botanique, FR – Solidays, CH Gurten-festival in Bern. Afterwards he toured the world with Aloe Blacc, Jimi Tenor, and worked with Toni Allen, Orlando Julius etc.

He works a musician, composer/ producer and curator of cultural events.

Since 2018 he tours with Gentleman, recorded for the SaMTV Unplugged Album and started touring with Samy Deluxe in 2019.

Since 2017 he is the Vice-Director of No Boundaries e.V.

Dr. Sophie Wagenhofer (Austria) is a historian and museologist with a special interest in the cultures and societies of the Middle East and North Africa. She studied history, Jewish and Islamic Studies in Vienna and Berlin and spent several months in the Middle East. For many years she worked at the Jewish Museum in Berlin developing, among others, a program on Muslim-Jewish encounters. In 2005 she moved to Morocco to support the team of the Jewish Museum in Casablanca and to prepare her doctoral thesis on the museum and its political and social function. After five years in academia as research fellow at Humboldt University and the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Sophie is currently working for a publishing house in Berlin. She is involved in various (inter-)cultural projects. Outside her professional life she is passionate about dance and cuisine – again with a strong affinity to North Africa and the Middle East.

Antje Grötzsch works as a culture and event manager in Berlin. Until October 2020 she

implemented a large number of cultural events at the Jewish Museum Berlin, such as the Long Night of Museums, the Summer Festival and the Jazz in the Garden concert series. Further stations were the StudentenWERK Berlin, where she, among

other things, started the student writer project “Berlin Stories” and the Haus für Poesie, where she mainly worked as a festival producer for the

poesiefestival berlin and the ZEBRA Film Festival. She also made a stop in the scientific community, where she organized international conferences on the topics of gender, age and economics at the University of Greifswald, but also the annual

celebratory event and the Sophie Charlotte Salon of the Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Kathrin Karlheim schloss eine kaufmännische Ausbildung zu Reiseverkehrskauffrau in einem Reisebüro in Wien, Österreich ab. Nach der Zeit im Reisebüro leitet sie die Abteilung Staff Travel im internationalen Event-Catering Unternehmen DO&CO Wien und Berlin. Hierbei organisierte sie An- und Abreisen sowie Unterkünfte aller Mitarbeiter zu Veranstaltungen wie z.B. den weltweiten Formel 1 Grand Prix. Als Projekt Managerin war sie viele Jahre bei der TEST Berlin GmbH, einer „full service“ Agentur mit den Schwerpunkten Hotel- und Eventservice zu internationalen Messen und Kongressen, tätig. Dort unterstützte sie internationale groß- und mittelständische Unternehmen aus verschiedenen Branchen bei Ihrer Messeorganisation. Im Anschluss daran war sie als Assistentin im Bereich Marketing und Vertrieb für die Forest Laboratories Deutschland GmbH zuständig, welche Pharma-Produkte in Deutschland vertreibt. Derzeit ist sie als Sachbearbeiterin und Assistentin der Geschäftsführung bei der Wasserberg Wärmetechnik und Kundendienst GmbH tätigt. Sie ist verheiratet und hat zwei Kinder. Neben dem Hobby „Taiko“, japanisches Trommeln, bringt sie ihre Vielseitigkeit und Kreativität im Acrylgießen und Nähen zum Ausdruck.

Birgit Manhart (Austria) lives and works as a naturopath in Berlin. Having spent her childhood in a small village in southern Austria, her education in marketing and PR took her to Vienna and very soon after gaining experience working in various advertising agencies she started her career at the Austrian National Tourist Office, organizing big events, meetings, including international trade shows and exhibitions. In 2001 the Austrian National Tourist Office asked her to take her expertise to their branch in Berlin, being the main contact and responsible for fairs and trade shows for Germany.

Between 2005 and 2009 she was self-employed, very successfully running her own Marketing and PR company, specializing in tourism. In 2010 she started her training at the well known Samuel Hahnemann Schule to become a naturopath. Since 2014 she is practicing as a fully qualified naturopath. You can find all necessary contact details and information on services offered on www.birgit-manhart.com. She is working freelance at events and as an ad writer.

Irene Hummel (Germany): Cultural administrator and event manager.


She studied modern history and German and Spanisch literature in Jena, Barcelona and Berlin. After working in the “Wissenschaftsjahre”, she started in 2007 as program coordinator in the department of literature and humanities in the “Haus der Kulturen der Welt”, Berlin. In this position she organized festivals, readings and congresses e.g. the international festival “1989 Global Histories”. In 2011 she started working in the communication department of the foundation Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung, Berlin. From 2011 - 2013 she organized several congresses with the topics education and networking in the educational field. In 2015 she opened the Webshop HUMMEL&WOLF for fairtraded jewelry and accessories which are made out of unusual materials.

Birgit Lang (Germany): Youth Detention Facility.

Dr. Marion Pollmann (Germany) works in her own practice as veterinary surgeon with a focus on homeopathy. She was born in Saarland and moved to Berlin in 1995 in order to study veterinary medicine. She made her PHD about the effects of probiotics on the infection rates of Chlamydiae in pigs for which she received a fellowship at Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes.

Her special focus lies on the differences between personal truths and realities, and its resulting life concepts and personal actions.

Sladjana Strunk wird in Belgrad im ehemaligen Jugoslawien geboren. Sie studiert Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaften an der Philologischen Fakultät der Universität in Belgrad. 1998/99 ist sie aktiv beim Aufbau der ersten Internetbuchhandlung in der Region knjizara.com beteiligt. Danach arbeitet sie mehrere Jahre für Samizdat B92, dem Verlagssektor von Radio B92, und ist im Anschluss als Büroleitung und Assistenz des Herausgebers im Verlag Fabrika knjiga (www.fabrikaknjiga.com) tätig.

Ehrenamtlich gründet sie zu dieser Zeit die Bibliothek des Dokumentationszentrums “Kriege 1991-1999“ und beginnt damit die Sammlung aufzubauen.

Nach ihrem Umzug nach Berlin im Jahre 2004 arbeitet sie drei Jahre für das Internet Portal Lyrikline.org, für das sie auch in den folgenden Jahren immer mal wieder auf Projektbasis arbeitet. Zudem ist sie 2007 im Rahmen der Berlin Biennale Guide des mehrwöchentlichen Kunstprojektes Backdoor-Tours. 
Bei verschiedenen Literaturfestivals und -veranstaltungen ist sie als Künstlerbetreuerin für Autoren aus Bosnien und Herzegowina, Kroatien, Montenegro, Mazedonien und Serbien im Einsatz. Sladjana Strunk ist verheiratet und Mutter von zwei Kindern.