Location information in the presentation descriptions below
Time: Tuesdays, 12:15 PM – 1:45 PM
Our internal colloquium serves as a platform for substantive exchange among staff members of Cultural Studies/European Ethnology and guest lecturers from other universities at home and abroad, thus acting as a meeting point for intellectual discourse. On selected dates during the semester, current or planned research projects, publications, and projects will be presented and discussed. Students are cordially invited to attend the event to gain insight into the work of the staff and participate in the current research discourse. It is also possible, in consultation with the subject department or study management, to attend this event as a substitute for selected courses.
Winter Semester 2026/2027
Exploring the Limits and Edges of Social Life
Organiser: Dr. Alina Jašina-Schäfer
This research colloquium asks what becomes visible when we shift our attention to those people, places, and material worlds that are often overlooked, neglected, or pushed to the margins. Whether through bodies, infrastructures and materialities under strain, or through experiences of exclusion, disappearance and exhaustion, the colloquium examines sites where dominant social orders reveal their contradictions, vulnerabilities and limits.
Rather than treating such phenomena as peripheral, we approach them as productive vantage points from which to explore the contemporary social worlds. What becomes visible when familiar social, political and economic arrangements no longer appear self-evident? And what can society’s edges reveal about its centre, its promises, and its limits?
10.11.2026 Olga Zeveleva (Universiteit Utrecht)
Conflict and Marginality: Expendable Bodies in Russia’s War on Ukraine
Philosophicum I, Room P207 (2nd floor)
24.11.2026 Francis Seeck (Technische Hochschule Nürnberg)
An den Rändern der Klassengesellschaft: Klassismus im Alltag von Grundsicherungsbezieher*innen
Philosophicum I, Room P207 (2nd floor)
01.12.2026 Sabine Hess (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
Shifting fields – moving edges: Kulturanthropologische Perspektiven auf gegenwärtige Verwerfungen im post-neo-faschistischen Europa
Philosophicum I, Room P207 (2nd floor)
12.01.2027 Urmila Goel (Humboldt-Universität Berlin)
Faire Fachkräfteanwerbung: Eine ethnografische Annäherung
Philosophicum I, Room P207 (2nd floor)
19.01.2027 Dace Dzenovska (Oxford University)
From Surplus to Excess: Postsocialist Emptiness in an Inter-Imperial Terrain
Faculty Room, Philosophicum, Room 01 185
02.02.2027 Francisco Martínez (Universidad de Murcia)
Before Anything Happens: How Europe Prepares for a Future It No Longer Trusts
Philosophicum I, Room P207 (2nd floor)
28.04.2026 Lydia Arantes (University of Graz, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology): “Von Strickrahmen als Lehrkomplizen, brennenden Holzstapeln im Alpenraum und einer widerständigen Grossmutter im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Kulturanthropologische Praxis als (multimodale) Vermittlung”
05.05.2026 Alice von Biebertein (Humboldt University Berlin, Institute of European Ethnology): “Temptations in ruins: Sovereign accumulation and the making of post-genocide Turkey”
19.05.2026 Sultan Doughan (Goldsmiths, University of London, Institute of Anthroplogy): “The minor detail of Palestine in German Holocaust archives: On denial and refusal of displacement”
16.06.2026 Meret Fehlmman (University of Zurich, Institute for Social Anthropology and Empirical Cultural Studies/Popular Cultures): “Tremate, tremate le streghe son tonrnate! Hexen in der Populärkultur – Figuren und Narrative in Medien und Künsten”
30.06.2026 Diana Vonnak (Czech Academy of Science, Institute of Ethnology): “Decolonisation and nationalist mobilisation: Wartime decommunisation activism in Ukraine”
07.07.2026 Sebastian Dümling (University of Würzburg, Institute of German Philology, Chair of European Ethnology/Empirical Cultural Studies): “Krautrock-Erzählungen: Ländliche Avantgarden und posthumane Imaginationen in der BRD (1967–1979)”
November 11, 2025 Romana Pozniak (University of Mainz/Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research Zagreb): “Social Reproduction and Humanitarianism: Feminisation of Care in the Croatian Migration Regime”
November 18, 2025 Dženeta Hodžić (Goethe University Frankfurt): “Towards political geomorphologies of post-Yugoslav environments? Spotlights from an ethnography on groundwater, karst, and its caregivers”
November 25, 2025 Olga Reznikova (Universität Zürich): „Bürgerliche Kälte der Prekären: Amateurfilme aus dem migrantischen New York“
December 12, 2025 Marketa Spiritova (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften): „Geerbte Dinge und Geschichte(n). Biografische Perspektiven auf Vertreibung und Spätaussiedlung aus der ČSSR“
January 13, 2026 Magdalena Buchczyk (Humboldt Universität): „Vital heritage, politics of speculation and uncertain futures in the Mediterranean“
January 20, 2026 Helmut Groschwitz (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften): „Beratung als Cultural Brokerage. Erfahrungen und Projekte an der Beratungs- und Forschungsstelle Immaterielles Kulturerbe Bayern“
February 3, 2026 Vjeran Pavlaković (University of Rijeka): “Muralization of War: Commemorative Street Art, Political Graffiti, and Memory Politics in Southeast Europe”
February 3, 2026 Presentation hosted by IFEAS: Christof Dejung (Bern): „Ethnographische Parallelen und deren Grenzen. Temporale und territoriale Ordnungen in der deutschen Volks- und Völkerkunde (1850er bis 1930er Jahre)”
February 10, 2026 Liviu Chelcea (University of Bucharest): “Logistics, bottled ecologies, and provincialization: An agenda for future research on bottled water in the social sciences”
April 16, 2025 Beate Binder (Humboldt University Berlin): “Ethnography, collaboration, critique. Lessons learned from feminist and queer anthropology”
April 24, 2025 “Redistributive imaginaries: Digitalization, Culture and Prosocial Contribution” (research project presentation): Rebecca Brammall (University of the Arts, London), Moritz Ege (University of Zürich), Janne Autto (University of Lapland), Merce Oliva (University of Pompeu Farba), Čarna Brković (University of Mainz); Discussant: Andrea Muehlebach (University of Bremen)
May 7, 2025 Jonatan Kurzwelly (PRIF – Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research, Frankfurt): “People and Identities in Nueva Germania“
May 21, 2025 Miriam Schickler (University of Kassel): “Geteilte Welten – a Multisensorial Intervention into Berlin’s Memory Landscapes”
June 11, 2025 Agnieszka Pasieka (University of Montreal): Presentation of the book Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe
July 2, 2025 Dr. Lisa Riedner (Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies and European Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University): “Secure, activate, exclude? Insights into the ethnographic social (state) regime analysis”
July 9, 2025 Andrew Gilbert (Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle): “Multimodality, Activation, Intervention: Experiments in Design Anthropology”,
November 6, 2024 Karin Bürkert (Tübingen): The Nuclear Phase-Out in the Vicinity of the Nuclear Power Plant. Results of a Teaching and Research Project
November 13, 2024 Barbara Wittmann (Bamberg): From the Women’s Health Movement to Gender Medicine – Cultural Studies Perspectives on an Unfinished Process
December 4, 2024 Christine Bischoff (Kiel): Religious Mobility(ies). Determining Relationships between Space, Religion, and Movement using Conversion Processes as an Example
December 11, 2024 Victoria Hegner (Jena): Politics of Justice at Universities and the Potential of Ethnographic Research
December 18, 2024 Martina Klausner (Frankfurt a. M.): Data Politics in the Mobility Transition: Insights into Ethnographic Research with and about Data
January 15, 2025 Timo Heimerdinger (Freiburg): Decluttering – Popular Practice and Epistemic Perspective
January 22, 2025 Juliane Tomann (Regensburg): Nuclear Heritage in the Making. Interpretations of GDR Uranium Ore Mining in the “New Landscape” Ronneburg
January 29, 2025 Markus Tauschek (Freiburg): Interpretive Sovereignties – On the Politicization of Culture
April 24, 2024 Prof. Hande Birkalan Gedik (Frankfurt): Writing Transnational and Transdisciplinary Histories of Anthropologies: “Un-doing” Anthropology of/in Turkey in the 1930s
May 8, 2024 Prof. Jessica Greenberg (Illinois): Justice in the Balance: Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law in Crises
May 22, 2024 PD Stefan Wellgraf (Berlin): Fencing Fraternities. Transnational Right-Wing Subcultures
June 5, 2024 Dr. Grit Wesser (Newcastle): Friends, Foes or Family? Ambiguities of kinship – ambiguities of state surveillance
June 19, 2024 Dr. Elisabeth Luggauer (Berlin): How to stand the heat? Multispecies practices of conditioning urban airs
July 3, 2024 Prof. Regina Bendix (Göttingen): “The spirits I summoned”: A Plea for Addressing War Legacies in Times of European Militarization
July 17, 2024 Dr. Jens Adam (Göttingen/Bielefeld): Fear and Gratitude. On the Moral Economies of “Soft Authoritarianism”
