Thorsten Heidersdorf

Thorsten Heidersdorf is a Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University. He obtained his PhD from the University of Heidelberg under Professor Weissauer and completed his Habilitation at the University of Bonn. Prior to joining Newcastle, he held positions at The Ohio State University and the Max-Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn. His office hours are on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 to 11:00 in Spring 2025.

He holds a PhD from the University of Heidelberg and a Habilitation from the University of Bonn. His research focuses on representation theory and tensor categories, with specific interests in Deligne categories, diagram algebras, stable representation theory of symmetric groups, thick and tensor ideals, representations of algebraic supergroups, quantum groups at roots of unity, and tilting modules. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of Duflo-Serganova cohomology, supercharacters, and tensor product decompositions.

His recent publications, spanning from 2018 to 2025, reflect a strong trend in categorical representation theory, particularly in the interplay between Deligne categories, Khovanov algebras, quantum groups, and supergroups. His work often involves deep structural results on tensor ideals, semisimplification functors, and universal properties in symmetric monoidal categories. He frequently collaborates with leading researchers such as Catharina Stroppel, Rainer Weissauer, and Inna Entova-Aizenbud.

• Organizer, BIRS Workshop: New Developments in Tensor Categories (2026)
• Co-organizer, ARTIN Meeting (Algebra and Representation Theory in the North), Newcastle (2024)
• Co-organizer, Conference on Representations of Supergroups (2024)
• Co-organizer, Hausdorff School on TQFTs and Representation Theory (2023)
• Co-organizer, MfO Mini Workshop on Representation Theory and Mathematical Physics (2022)

Thorsten Heidersdorf advises PhD and master's students in representation theory and related areas. His current PhD student is Chris Milionis (started 2024). He has supervised numerous former students at the bachelor’s and master’s levels at both Newcastle and the University of Bonn. His teaching includes advanced courses such as Lie Groups and Lie Algebras, Algebraic Topology, and various graduate seminars on representation theory, Hopf algebras, and supermathematics. He has also contributed to public outreach through the MfO snapshot series with an article on truncated fusion rules for supergroups.