Category Archives: Lecture Series

Lecture, Lecture Series, News, Theorie und Praxis des interdisziplinären Kuratierens

Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – May 28, 2025 with Aparecida Vilaça

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.

Further information

Plakat Ringvorlesung Beziehungsweise Familie
Portrait Aparecida Vilaça

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.

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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – May 14, 2025 with Janet Carsten

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.

Further information

Plakat Ringvorlesung Beziehungsweise Familie
Portrait Janet Carsten

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).

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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – April 30, 2025 with Nadja-Christina Schneider

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.

Further information

Plakat Ringvorlesung Beziehungsweise Familie
Nadja-Christina Schneider

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).

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Invitation to the lecture series “Hands On. Research Perspectives on Collections”, February 17, 2025 – Quellenkritik und Datenkritik? Erkenntniskritische Perspektiven auf Datafizierungspraktiken in wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen

On February 17, 2025 at 18:00 c.t. the fifth session of the lecture series “Hands-on. Research Perspectives on Collections”, organized by the Coordination Office for Scientific Collections in Germany, will take place:

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!

Organisers:
Sarah Elena Link and Gesa Grimme
Coordination Centre for Scientific Collections in Germany

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.

There is also the possibility to join the event via Zoom.
Further information can be found here.

Lecture series “Hands On. Research Perspectives on Collections”,17.02..2025, Poster
Lecture series “Hands On. Research Perspectives on Collections”,17.02..2025
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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – Andrés F. Castro

     

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.

Further information

Plakat Ringvorlesung Beziehungsweise Familie
SHF_eb00234368 © Andrés F. Castro

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.

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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – Anette Fasang

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.

Further information

Familie_Plakat_Ringvorlesung_A1_02-1
Anette Fasang

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.

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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters) – 8 January 2025 with Tatjana Thelen

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.

Further information

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Lecture series “Beziehungsweise Familie” (Family Matters)

Aside

On 11 December 2024 at 18:00 c.t. we invite you to the second date of the lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie" (Family Matters):

Digital Kinship – Memes as Cultural Connectors in Digitality for People from Elementary Age Onward

Prof. Dr. Petra Anders (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaften)

The concept of digital culture (Stalder 2017) expands the notion of kinship: people interact by responding to digitalized content from one another, constantly forming new communities often shaped by algorithms. Memes serve as connective elements in these digital communities; they allow people, often humorously, to show which cultural references they identify with and to what extent they feel a sense of belonging (Shifman 2014). Professor Anders’ Center for Poetic Digital Education at Humboldt University builds on this digital culture, supporting individuals from elementary school age in developing their own senses of belonging and becoming empowered members of online communities. Various school projects reveal that children enjoy exchanging meaningful content through memes and demonstrate impressive interpretative skills when engaging with the literary ambiguity in children’s literature (Anders 2024).

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:

11 December 2024,

6 to 8 pm

in Room 3 (Saal 3), ground floor, Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz.

Further information

Familie_Plakat_Ringvorlesung_A1_02-1
Petra Anders
© Peter Rigaud

Petra Anders studied German, History, and Philosophy at the universities of Göttingen and Vienna from 1992 to 1999. After completing her teacher training in Berlin, she worked as a teacher in Brandenburg, Baden-Württemberg, and Hamburg. In 2010, she earned her doctorate at the University of Bremen with a dissertation on “Poetry Slam in German Instruction.” From 2011 to 2012, she was a Visiting Scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City (with a focus on Digital Storytelling and Cultural Studies). Her research interests include film and literature didactics, as well as education in a world that can also be shaped digitally. In April 2022, she received the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Teaching Excellence Award for 2021.  

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Invitation to the lecture series “Hands On. Research Perspectives on Collections”, November 25, 2024 – Vom Tasten zum Sehen. Eine Objektgeschichte der geburtshilflichen Untersuchung

On November 11, 2024 at 18:00 c.t. the second session of the lecture series “Hands-on. Research Perspectives on Collections”, organized by the Coordination Office for Scientific Collections in Germany, will take place:

Vom Tasten zum Sehen. Eine Objektgeschichte der geburtshilflichen Untersuchung
Prof. Dr. Karen Nolte (Universität Heidelberg)

When male doctors in Germany entered the female-dominated field of obstetrics, they had to come to terms with their own and women’s modesty with regard to genital examinations. They initially restricted the obstetric examination to morally acceptable and thoroughly learned touches. The lecture will examine how male obstetricians dealt with female modesty and how this was manifested in obstetrical objects. Based on an object-related analysis of specula vaginae and cervix models from the 18th and 19th centuries in the German obstetric collections in Würzburg and Göttingen, it will be shown how obstetric examinations and thus the objects themselves changed historically in form and function over the course of the 19th century. The specula developed from the tubular speculum, which allowed a limited view of the female genitalia, to the beak-shaped and two-part speculum, with which the vagina could be spread wide open. The establishment of the medical gaze in obstetric examinations reflects the emergence of the scientific concept of objectivity around 1850.

The lecture will be held in German.

Participation is possible without pre-registration and is free for all interested parties!

Organisers:
Sarah Elena Link and Gesa Grimme
Coordination Centre for Scientific Collections in Germany

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.

There is also the possibility to join the event via Zoom.

Further information

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Relationships with family A series of lectures on the annual theme of the Humboldt Forum 2025

Family is a blurry umbrella term for various forms of relations. It stands for origin and belonging, but also for obligation and conflict. As a central building block of social life, the family conveys rules and norms, moulds desires, fears and goals. At the same time, there is no fixed definition of what a family is. Depending on time and culture, it can be understood in many different ways.

The lecture series is dedicated to the contradictory reality of the model of the nuclear family today and asks for alternatives from a global perspective. Renowned academics from a wide range of disciplines will present current research to discuss the creative, ethical and innovative potential of alternative family and kinship concepts. The lecture series is the prelude to the Humboldt Forum’s theme year of the same name, which starts in autumn 2025.

The lecture series is part of the cooperation between the Humboldt Forum and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.