Di., 10. Juni, 12:30-16:30
Ein Workshop zu Visualisierungen von Infrastrukturvisionen in Geschichte und Gegenwart
In den letzten hundert Jahren hat Berlin eine Reihe von Krisen erlebt, die die Stadt, ihre Bevölkerung und ihre Infrastrukturplaner*innen vor große Herausforderungen gestellt haben. Welche stadttechnischen Zukunftsvisionen wurden zur Bewältigung von Krisenerscheinungen in der turbulenten Geschichte Berlins entwickelt? Welche Nachwirkungen hatten diese historischen Zukunftsvisionen? Welche Anregungen können wir daraus für heutige Zukunftspläne ziehen? Anhand von inspirierendem Bildmaterial aus den Archiven lernen wir einige dieser visionären Vorschläge zur Stärkung der infrastrukturellen Resilienz der Stadt kennen. Ausgehend von diesen Visualisierungen diskutieren wir, welche Ziele mit diesen Visionen verfolgt wurden, was aus ihnen geworden ist und wie sie heute noch wirken. In Zusammenarbeit mit Expert*innen aus den Bereichen Spekulation, Kunst und Wissenschaftskommunikation werden wir diese Visionen auf neuartiger Weise aktivieren, um aktuelle Herausforderungen der Hauptstadt zu reflektieren und darauf zu reagieren.
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
On April 30, 2025 at 18:00 we invite you to the next date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
Family and other forms of cohabitation in urban India
Prof. Dr. Nadja-Christina Schneider (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften)
Nadja-Christina Schneider’s presentation will examine the extent to which housing planning in India has changed in recent decades to accommodate new social and demographic developments. Although the trend, especially in larger cities, is clearly moving towards housing forms for smaller family units, multi-generational households continue to exist. A rapidly growing market has also emerged for age-appropriate housing and care facilities. Households and communal living are still closely associated with the ‘family living model’, particularly from a state perspective. Does this in turn offer room for alternative forms of family and kinship alongside heteronormative extended and nuclear families? And conversely, how accepted are individual or communal forms of living that deliberately do not define themselves in terms of family or kinship? The lecture will take a closer look at these questions using selected examples.
The lecture will be held in German.
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:
30 April 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Prof. Dr. Nadja-Christina Schneider is a South Asian Studies scholar and teaches as a professor at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at HU Berlin. The results of her research on family, reproduction and housing in India can be found in the two book publications ‘Reimagining Housing, Rethinking the Role of Architects in India’ (Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2024)(open access) and ‘Family Norms and Images in Transition. Contemporary Negotiations of Reproductive Labour, Love and Relationships in India (ed. with Fritzi-Marie Titzmann)(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020).
The TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater invites you to an evening of dialogue and presentations on the preservation of bird habitats through activism and visual art. Featuring conservationist and activist Nick Byaba (Parrot Tree Caretakers Association, Uganda) and artist duo Maria Leena Räihälä & Manuel Bonik (Morgenvogel Real Estate, Germany/Finland), the event explores the intersections of interspecies care and the shared agency of birds and humans in urban and rural environments.
Event details Date: March 25, 2025 Time: 6–8 pm Location: Tieranatomisches Theater, HU Berlin, Campus Nord, Philipstr. 12/13, 10115 Berlin Language: English Admission: Free
With Nick Byaba (Parrot Tree Caretakers Association), Kampala, Uganda Maria Leena Räihälä & Manuel Bonik (Morgenvogel Real Estate), Berlin
Moderator: Felix Sattler, TA T
The event is part of the exhibition Hörner/Antlfinger: Parrot Terristories (on view at TA T until March 29) by artists Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger in collaboration with Nick Byaba and CMUK.
While operating in distinct contexts—Uganda’s tropical forests and European urban landscapes—both initiatives reflect a commitment to birds as valued co-inhabitants.
Parrot Tree Caretakers Association (PTCA) Founded in 2020 by Nick Byaba, the PTCA is a community-based organization dedicated to conserving grey parrots and their habitats. Through tree-planting initiatives, educational outreach, and scientific monitoring, the PTCA works with local farmers and conservationists to ensure the survival of this endangered species. Key achievements include planting over 6,000 indigenous trees, monitoring parrot flyways, and integrating rehabilitated parrots back into their original habitats.
The PTCA also runs educational programs for children, fostering a new generation of conservationists who advocate for the protection of parrots and their ecosystems. Looking ahead, the PTCA aims to establish the world’s first Grey Parrot Museum in Uganda, serving as a hub for education, research, and awareness. greyparrotmuseum-uganda.org
The exhibition Hörner/Antlfinger: Parrot Terristories includes the joint work SEEDS by Hörner/Antlfinger and Nick Byaba.
Morgenvogel Real Estate Morgenvogel Real Estate (M0RE) is a long-term artistic initiative by Maria Leena Räihälä and Manuel Bonik, addressing the loss of nesting opportunities for urban birds in the wake of urban redevelopment. For over a decade, the Berlin-based art project Morgenvogel has engaged in ecological urban interventions by producing and distributing handcrafted birdhouses tailored for species like tits, sparrows, and pied flycatchers.
With support from conservation foundations, Morgenvogel has placed over 1,000 nesting boxes across Berlin and other European Cities, often accompanying installations with art events such as BirdChurch, Avanti Natura!, and BirdTalks.
Beyond Morgenvogel Real Estate, Maria Leena Räihälä and Manuel Bonik have been engaged in landscape restoration, most recently by their MAJAVA project (2021–2024), an initiative inspired by beavers as ecosystem engineers (Majava is the Finnish word for beaver). Through dam-building and water filtration structures, Morgenvogel seeks to counteract environmental degradation in Finnish wetland and forest areas. morgenvogel.net
Keynotes organized by Roxana Coman, Gizem Zencirci, Dr. Belgin Turan-Ozkaya, Dr. Malte Fuhrmann, Habiba Insaf, Emma Jelinski.
Since heritage has a complex relationship with the concept of inheritance, and hence it presumes the notion of ownership, it has been at the center of various political projects; imperial, local, national and civilizational. Through a focus on (post)-Ottoman lands and imaginaries, this workshop aims to engage with civilization, empire, nation, and heritage as constructs in flux, forever dependent on individuals, objects, ideas, and places that carry inherited meanings and become catalysts for new kinds of meaning making, as well. By studying the reimagination and reproduction of the Ottoman empire across time and place, we examine how multiple political projects have engaged in memory-making and heritage-making practices.
During the keynotes, Dr. Belgin Turan-Ozkaya and Dr. Malte Fuhrmann will approach the multiplicity of heritage(s) in the Ottoman Empire and its former imperial center, Istanbul. Dr. Turan-Ozkaya will engage with the ethnic, cultural, religious plurality, and how its post-imperial framework had shifted the conversation to one increasingly Turkified. Dr. Fuhrmann will breach the commodification of heritage in Istanbul via the current audio-visual digital trends, and how this complicates further the discussion on and around the archaeological and historical legacies.
Quellenkritik und Datenkritik?
Erkenntniskritische Perspektiven auf Datafizierungspraktiken in wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen Dr. Nora Probst (Universität Köln)
Like many cultural heritage institutions, university collections are in a state of flux: Not only are they exploring various options for digitising their holdings, but their new acquisitions are also increasingly available as ‘born-digital documents’. The resulting digital collections and their metadata require new concepts of a source and data critique that considers the medial situatedness of the digitised material as well as metadata-related practices of modelling, collection, processing, dissemination and visualisation. The lecture is concerned with epistemological perspectives on the datafication of collections in the humanities and cultural studies and, not least, focuses on a power-critical examination of discriminatory attributions and descriptions in the metadata of cultural heritage.
The lecture will be held in German.
Participation is possible without pre-registration and is free for all interested parties!
Time and Place:
The event takes place on Monday November, 25, 2024 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Kurssaal, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Campus Nord, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Afterwards, there will be an opportunity to network and exchange ideas over a small drink.
On 5 February 2025 at 18:00 we invite you to the next date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
(Missing) Intersections of Social Inequality and Population Research – A Call for Further Study
Dr. Andrés F. Castro
Social inequality and population research have developed as parallel conversations with little intersection. In this talk, I will present descriptive results on the parallel development of these research areas using basic text analysis of published research from 1960 to the present. I will argue that the relative neglect of social inequalities in quantitative population research is related to a Eurocentric bias in the social sciences, and I will quantify this bias using various sources. Additionally, I will provide examples of how population research, particularly family and fertility research, could benefit from a focus on social inequality. Finally, I will offer my view on how social inequality research could be better integrated into the social sciences beyond population studies.
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:
5 February 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Dr. Andrés F. Castrois a computational social scientist, sociologist, and demographer at the Computational Social Science and Humanities Program of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (CSSH-BSC).I graduated from the UNiversity of Pennsylvania in 2019 and since then I have worked in several research centers in Europe including the Frenc National Institute for Demographic Research (Ined), the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, and the Center for Demographic Studies in Barcelona. My research areas include global inequalities in knowledge production, bibliometric analysis and research assessment, and population studies, primarily focus on fertility and family dynamics in the global south and among immigrant populations.
On 22 January 2025 at 18:00 we invite you to the next date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
Career and Family Life Demography and Inequality in Focus
Prof. Dr. Anette Fasang (Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute for Social Sciences)
Dr. Anette Fasang is Professor of Microsociology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Director of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Director of the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences. Before moving to Berlin, she completed her doctorate at Jacobs University Bremen and did postdoctoral research at Yale University and Columbia University. Her research interests include family demography, stratification and life course sociology. She was awarded the prestigious Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research in 2018 and 2023. Her recent work has appeared in leading international journals such as American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Population and Development Review and Sociological Methodology.
The lecture will be held in German.
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:
22 January 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Dr. Anette Fasang ist Professorin für Mikrosoziologie an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Direktorin der Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften und Direktorin der Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences. Vor ihrem Wechsel nach Berlin hat sie an der Jacobs University Bremen promoviert und als Postdoktorandin an der Yale University und der Columbia University geforscht. Ihre Forschungsinteressen umfassen Familiendemographie, Stratifikation und Lebenslaufsoziologie. Sie wurde 2018 und 2023 mit dem renommierten Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research ausgezeichnet. Ihre jüngsten Arbeiten sind in führenden internationalen Fachzeitschriften wie American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Population and Development Review und Sociological Methodology erschienen.
On 8 January 2025 at 18:00 c.t. we invite you to the third date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):
Family, Care, State – Ideals of Belonging and Practices of Exclusion
Prof. Dr. Tatjana Thelen (University of Vienna, Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology)
The concept of the “modern” family is a central element of European self-description. Accordingly, in Europe, kinship is in decline and largely replaced by an emotionalized (nuclear or core) family, which carries little political significance. This self-image contrasts with an external perspective that assumes the persistence, even dominance, of “traditional” kinship in the past or outside of Europe. The economic and political implications of kinship organization in Europe are thus often overlooked. Moreover, this narrative of progress can lead to a devaluing of other forms of cohabitation. When it comes to family care, however, an ambivalent perspective arises. In Europe, care is perceived as requiring state support, while in other parts of the world, it seems to remain intact. “Proper” care within families thus becomes a marker of political belonging. In my lecture, I will explore both the political significance of kinship in Germany and the forms of exclusion that arise from a specific understanding of kinship care.
The lecture will be held in German.
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:
8 January 2025,
6 to 8 pm
in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.
Tatjana Thelen is a social anthropologist teaching at the University of Vienna. After studying in Cologne, she earned her doctorate at the Free University of Berlin and habilitated at Martin Luther University Halle/Wittenberg. Her academic career includes positions at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology as well as at the universities of Zurich and Bayreuth. In 2023, she taught at Stanford, and from 2020 to 2021, she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Paris. Her research topics include care, the state, and kinship. She has conducted fieldwork in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Germany.
Zentralinstitut der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
