The team of HU ‘Knowledge Exchange with Society‘ at Zentrum für Kulturtechnik (HZK) invites researchers to participate in a training program for Public Engagement, delivered by the Berlin School of Public Engagement and Open Science. The workshop series is an effective and flexible introduction to public engagement/ knowledge exchange between science and society. It offers the possibility to gain a certificate in the field of participation and engagement.
What: Training program (Ger/Eng) with 3 thematic modules and optional units: 1. Foundations – Engagement in Practice, 2. Evaluation Practice, 3. Creative Engagement – Skills and Formats
Who: the training is aimed at researchers from all disciplines and at all stages of their careers, interested in cooperating with non-academic and community partners
When: from October 2025 to June 2026, with an average of one workshop per month; you can choose and book the individual appointments on your own
If you are interested in participating or have questions, please contact the HU-team Knowledge Exchange with Society at wissensaustausch.hzk@hu-berlin.de until September 16, 2025.
Fluid Interdisciplinarities is a three-day festival which brings together researchers, artists, and practitioners to unpack water-related research and practices from October 23-25, 2025. The diverse program will feature academic sessions and public events, including film screenings, walkshops and artistic interventions to foster knowledge exchange between science, art, and society.
Fluid Interdisciplinarities will take a special focus on rivers, such as the Spree, the Maas, the Brahmaputra, the Magdalena, the Nile, the Danube, and the Panke. These rivers will not remain one-dimensional and abstracted topics, but be enlivened through rich discussions, collaborative and participatory activities. This will be the focus of House of Rivers on Saturday October 25th, which is designedwith showcasing interactive discussions and artistic projects on water session.
The event is organized by the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) and artist Regina Hügli (One Body of Water), in cooperation with the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the University of Montpellier, the Knowledge Exchange with Society team and the TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater at the ZfK.
Stay tuned for a full program and registration information.
The student-run and volunteer-based Kleine Humboldt Galerie presents a group exhibition featuring eight artistic positions, accompanied by a range of mediation formats.
In between I felt it all explores spaces and conditions of the “in between” – transitions that are difficult to grasp. As members of society, we move through private, public, and shared spaces every day. But where do those places begin that feel in between? On emotional and identity levels, too, we navigate fields of tension that create states of ambiguity. The “in between” is paradoxical and ambivalent – which is precisely why it calls for artistic engagement.
The exhibited works approach this theme in diverse, interconnected ways: as architectural fragments, as queer and/or diasporic identities, or as subtle shifts between visibility and invisibility. Through installation, photography, painting, and performance, the artists open up urban in-between spaces, question social norms, and offer personal insights.
Mediation formats build bridges between artworks and audiences. They invite participation, contextualization, and critical engagement. Questions of identity and political belonging are not just presented, but actively negotiated – creating space for reflection, new perspectives, and critical inquiry.
The event Research Lounge on the topic of “Participatory Approaches in Research” will take place on Tuesday, June 3, 2025 from 2 to 5 p.m., at the Central Institute Center for Cultural Techniques (ZfK) on Campus North. Organized by the team of the Vice President Research in cooperation with the HU office for “Knowledge Exchange with Society”, researchers from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and its partner institutions are invited to network at this event: Register here
Knowledge exchange with society is becoming an increasingly important part of knowledge production in research through participatory and transdisciplinary approaches. While these approaches are standard in some research areas, such as sustainability and innovation research, there is less experience and exchange in other areas. Among other research methods, participatory and transdisciplinary research methods are seen as a particularly good way to contribute innovative solutions to current societal challenges. To this end, cooperation with citizens, organised civil society, culture or politics can open up new research topics and strengthen trust in science through their active participation.
There are many definitions, methods and experiences of participatory approaches to research, as well as a wide variety of actors and forms of participation. The Research Lounge “Participation in Research” therefore aims to promote scientific exchange and networking in this area and to highlight the diversity of current research activities and examples of success at Humboldt-Universität.
Programme
2:00 p.m. – Welcome
Prof. Dr. Christoph Schneider (Vice President for Research) Xenia Muth, Leonie Kubigsteltig, Zentrum für Kulturtechnik
2:20 p.m. – Keynote speeches
Dr. Saskia Schäfer (Institute for Asian and African Studies):
Participatory research on democracy: Insights from civic education and local decision-making
Dr. Silke Stöber (Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences):
Participatory action research for food systems transformations: methods and challenges
Prof. Dr. Regina Römhild (Institute for European Ethnology):
Postcolonial Neighborhoods: A new experiment in collective ethnography and trans-academic collaboration
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Verhoeven (Institute for German Language and Linguistics):
Sprachen Berlins – Languages of Berlin: mapping the city’s linguistic diversity
Prof. Dr. Miriam Bouzouita (Institute for Romance Studies):
Using Citizen Science to examine geospatial and sociolinguistic variation and change
Break
Prof. Dr. Robert Arlinghaus (Integrative Fisheries Management, IGB, IRI THESys):
Co-production of knowledge in participation changes attitudes, norms and behaviour of practitioners: Examples from fisheries research
Prof. Dr. Heike Wiese (Institut for German Language and Linguistics):
Shaping multilingualism together: Participatory research with Berlin pupils and HU students
Dr. Constanze Saunders (Professional School of Education):
‘Learning schools’ and research-based teacher training
Indrawan Prabaharyaka (Institute for European Ethnology):
Animation and Prototyping: Two transdisciplinary tools for knowledge exchange with more-than-human society
Dr. Stefanie Alisch (Institute for Musicology and Media Studies):
Reasoning Sessions und Dubdampfer – Sound System Epistemologies networks in Berlin
We are excited to announce, that as part of the Conference „Borderless Museums: Redefining Museum Narratives and Inclusivity“ starting this Sunday on International Museums Day, inherit director Sharon Macdonald will give another keynote lecture titled “Museums Across Borders: Connective Potentials”!
📍 EPICenter, Transalpina Square, Nova Gorica
📅 18 May 2025, 18:00
🎟 For registration, agenda updates, and inquiries: epic@go2025.eu
Starting on International Museums Day, the GO! Borderless Museum Conference will explore how museums can redefine narratives, foster inclusivity, and serve communities in today’s evolving world.
Further topics addressed by the conference will include how museums can become borderless platforms of knowledge, discussions on museum ethics, curatorial roles and dilemmas, community collaboration, as well as transnational and cross-border museum cooperation.
We are delighted to announce that inherit director Sharon Macdonald will give the keynote lecture – Recentring and resocializing collections: connective potentials – this Friday at the Anthropology Day 2025, with the theme “Anthropology, Collections, Restitution“!
📍 Wereldmuseum Leiden
📅 16 May, 11:00
The past decades have witnessed growing concerns around collections in Western museums and archives. Amid broader post- and decolonial critiques of heritage institutions, objects and practices, museums were confronted with demands to look critically at, or investigate possibilities for the restitution of (parts of) their collections. While the focus has tended to be on ethnographic collections, other collections that include objects, human/ancestral remains, photographs, audiovisual material, botanical specimens, field notes, indigenous knowledge, etc. raise similar concerns. Anthropology and anthropologists are deeply involved in these developments. Anthropological collecting as a colonial and extractive method has played a significant role in the establishment of ethnographic and other collections. At the same time, anthropologists are also actively involved in finding ways to address this past and push for decolonial work, developing novel ways of doing ethnography as well as looking for alternative methods, epistemologies and forms of collaboration.
This year’s Anthropology Day provides an opportunity to reflect on past contributions and look ahead. What have anthropologists contributed to debates on restitution and the evolving practices of museums, archives, and the arts? How do anthropologists collaborate with scholars and professionals from other fields—such as art history, museum studies, archaeology, history, and law—as well as with activists, artists, and stakeholders, also from the Global South? What future directions do anthropologists envision? Can ethnographic fieldwork help reshape the history and practice of ethnography as a form of collecting? How can anthropologists contribute to research on (colonial) ethnographic collections, and how might these contributions reshape the way we do anthropology?
On May 28, 2025 at 18:00 we invite you to the next date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
Becoming kin: the making of kinship in Indigenous Amazonia
Prof. Dr. Aparecida Vilaca (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social Museu Nacional, São Paulo)
In this lecture, Prof. Dr. Aparecida Vilaça intends to discuss, based on her personal experience recounted in the book Paletó and Me. Memories of my Indigenous Father (Stanford 2021), how Amazonian indigenous peoples conceive of kinship not as something given from biological relationships, but to be produced in perpetuity through acts of care and recognition.
The lecture will be held in English.
Participation is possible without pre-registration and is open to all interested parties.
Organiser:
Prof Dr Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Alia Rayyan (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Laura Goldenbaum (Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace)
Place and time:
28 May 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Aparecida Vilaça is Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology/MuseuNacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and a researcher for the National Science Research Council (CNPq). Since 1986 she works among the Wari’ Indians of South-Western Amazonia, Brazil. Her fieldwork has been financed by the Ford Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She was Professeur Invité at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1999, Directeur d’Études Invité at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the same city in 2000, Visiting Professor of the Centre of Latin American Studies of the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2001 and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Social Anthropology at the same University in 2004.
On May 14, 2025 at 18:00 we invite you to the next date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
The Creativity of Kinship
Prof. Dr. Janet Carsten (School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh)
This lecture questions conventional understandings of the family by reflecting on the imaginative, ethical, and creative qualities of everyday kinship over time – qualities that are often ignored by social scientists. Rather than constituting a realm of conservatism and normativity, as is generally assumed, I instead propose a historically nuanced understanding of kinship and relatedness that has change and transformation at its core. Here I revisit themes from my work over several decades, including research in a Malay village in the early 1980s, a study of adoptees’ searches for birth kin in Scotland, later urban research in hospital blood banks and clinical pathology labs in Penang and, most recently, work on the texture of marital lives in the ethnically and culturally diverse world of contemporary Penang in Malaysia. I consider the ways in which ethical imagination, care and creativity expand the seemingly closed, conventional bounds of kinship. Searches for birth kin undertaken by adoptees expand their horizons of familial relations, demanding ethical reflection about family relations and about the constitution of the self. Marriage draws new elements into the heart of kinship, and is a source of change and renewal under the persuasive guise of continuity and convention. It requires a constant process of adjustment and accommodation – or refusal of accommodation – to a spouse and their relatives. Selectively and cumulatively, intimate familial processes of ethical imagination constitute and enable political transformation. These processes, I argue, are at the heart of the generativity and creativity of kinship, and its contribution to historical and political change.
The lecture will be held in English.
Participation is possible without pre-registration and is open to all interested parties.
Organiser:
Prof Dr Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Alia Rayyan (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Dr Laura Goldenbaum (Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace)
Place and time:
14 May 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Prof. Dr. Janet Carsten is Emeritus Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the anthropology of kinship with particular reference to Malaysia and Britain; it encompasses domestic relations, gender, historical migration, the house, adoption reunions, and kinship and memory. She has worked on ideas about bodily substance, and the interface between popular and medical ideas about blood in Malaysia and Britain. Janet Carsten is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Member of Academia Europaea. She has recently held an ERC Advanced Grant to examine contemporary transformations of marriage in global perspective. Among other works, she is the author of After Kinship (2004) and Blood Work: Life and Laboratories in Penang (2019).
Wetlands emerge where water encounters land. Activists recording endangered migratory bird sounds in mudflats, people dancing bare feet in wetlands, soil scientists sticking tools in the peat, farmers draining peatlands for agriculture, artists putting their hands in marshes.
muddy measures. when wetlands and heritage converse experiments with wetlands becoming spaces for debate and engagement inviting people with their situated knowledges, to learn from one another. It welcomes audiences to exhibitions and events, and asks: How can a heritage perspective can reshape our understanding of wetlands? Conversely, how does engaging with wetlands in transformation alter our understanding of heritage? How are wetlands measured and what counts as measurement? What and who falls out of the grid?
The muddy measures exhibition at the Tieranatomisches Theater opened on 27 March 2025 at 18:00. The exhibition features materials from the Humboldt Universit’s collection Moorarchiv, as well as the Land Prints series of Teresa Pereda, and documentations from the Saemangeum Citizen Ecological Investigation Group.
Monthly changing guest exhibitions which feature Berlin-based research projects form an integral part of muddy measures. It will include “If you take care of birds, you take care of most of the environmental problems in the world” from June 12 – July 19 by anthropologist and HZK Member Magdalena Buchczyk (Institute of European Ethnology), as well as “Swamp Things!” from March 27 – April 30 and “Latent Accumulations” May 10 – May 31, developed with project partners.
There will also be several events including the workshop “Listening to the Mallín” with the artist Teresa Pereda (29 March), the workshop “MoorFit” with the artist Daniel Hengst (25 April, Häsener Luch), the roundtable event of Latent Accumulations (9 May) and workshop by artist-researcher Alice Jarry (10 May), and the film screening of “Sura. A Love Song” by Hwang Yun (12 June, Kino Central).
Laurentiu Constantin measures a soil sample in Bieselfließ, Germany, November 2024
Contributors: Anahí Herrera Cano (CONICET-UBA), Ayelen Fiori (Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco), Charlett Wenig (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces), Daniel Hengst, Dongpil Oh, Heejung Jung, Seongsil Lee and Seungjun Oh (Saemangeum Citizen Ecological Investigation Group), Doohee Oh (Peace Wind), Eugenia Tomasini, Clara Tomasini and Milagros Córdova (Centro MATERIA IIAC-UNTREF), Yun Hwang, Iva Rešetar (Matters of Activity), Juana del Carmen Aigo (INIBIOMA-CONICET), Jutta Zeitz (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – HU), Laurentiu Constantin (HU), Léa Perraudin (Matters of Activity), Lucia Braemer (HU), Lucy Norris (Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin), Magdalena Buchczyk (HU), Moorarchiv (HU), Paula Vogt (University of Potsdam), Rosa Blens (HU), Saemangeum Citizen Ecological Investigation Group, and Teresa Pereda.
Curated by Yoonha Kim, Juliana Robles de la Pava, Margareta von Oswald
