Category Archives: News

Information, News

The Temporary Object Lab

In the course of a ‚material turn‘ the role of the scientific collection expands. The Temporary Object Lab was an interdisciplinary workspace that brought together individuals of from the worlds of science and art in order to jointly conduct research on collection objects.. This pilot project combined a public collection depot, an atelier and an exhibition. The participants engaged in workshops, participatory reconstructions and teaching events. This publication presents their workshop reports and manifestos.

Edited by Oliver Thie
With texts by Jochen Hennig, Felix Sattler, Sebastian Döring, Angela Strauß and Oliver Thie
CLOU – Cluster Letters of Understanding

Information, News, Research

„Digitales Netzwerk Sammlungen“ – a project of the Berlin University Alliance

The project is jointly managed by the Humboldt-Universität, Freie Universität and Charité, but refers to partners of the Berlin University Alliance. The aim is to evaluate IT systems and digital strategies, taking into account different perspectives of scientific use, networking and cataloguing of collections, as well as subject-specific needs. Case studies on collections, usage and digitization scenarios will be used to develop recommendations for action that will serve as the basis for a sustainable collection infrastructure for Berlin’s universities.

The Koordinierungsstelle für Universitätssammlungen in Deutschland (HU), with its nationwide and international expertise in this field, is accompanying this project as a partner.

In addition, the overarching and transdisciplinary approach and strategic orientation is supported by an expert advisory board.

„Digitales Netzwerk Sammlungen“ is a component of the „Sharing Resources“ workspace of the Berlin University Alliance. Access to excellent infrastructure is a decisive competitive factor in promoting research and recruiting outstanding scholars and scientists. The goal is to make the best possible use of existing resources and to be able to plan new projects jointly and thus more efficiently. Collections are seen as part of the complex research infrastructure, which should be transparent and accessible to the four partners.

More than 90 scientific, partly unique collections are known at Berlin’s universities. University collections were and are created in the context of scientific research or as a basis for teaching. In some subjects they form a central basis for research; in their diversity they are the basis for subject history, history of science and culture, object and collection research. The Berlin collections are mainly housed in the institutes, which favors close integration into teaching and research. The networking of the collections is still comparatively weak and poorly organized, which currently makes it difficult to use them.

A good, centralized record facilitates and enables provenance research, cooperation in teaching, scientific cooperation, exhibitions and citizen science projects. At the same time, such a system is a challenging task due to the large number of requirements and the interdisciplinary nature of the work. The aim of the study is to develop and evaluate a concept over a period of 19 months that will open up the collections as a scientific resource and at the same time support the needs of the Berlin collections.

Project management and contact

Dr. Yong-Mi Rauch (provisional Collection Officer, University Library of Humboldt-Universität)
yong-mi.rauch@ub.hu-berlin.de

Dr. Andreas Brandtner (Director of the university library of the Freie Universität Berlin)
brandtner@ub.fu-berlin.de

Prof. Dr. Thomas Schnalke (Director of the medical history museum of the Charité)
thomas.schnalke@charite.de

 

Berlin_University_Alliance
Supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the State of Berlin as part of the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the States

Sound Archive, News

Dr. Alia Mossallam is a guest researcher in the Sound Archive

The HZK welcomes Dr. Alia Mossallam as visiting scholar at the Sound Archive. She is a cultural historian. Her PhD dissertation explored a popular history of Nasserist Egypt through stories told and songs sung by people who contributed to milestone events of the 1952 revolution (the building of the Aswan High Dam, and the 1956 and 1967 wars). She has taught at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences (CILAS), Freie Universität Berlin (FU) and held the series of history workshops ‘Ihky ya Tarikh’ with students, activists and artists in governorates all over Egypt, as an experiment in history-telling. She has also explored playwriting with Laila Soliman and Hassan El-Geretly as attempts to bring stories (and songs) of struggle unto the stage.
Her publications include an article on youth activism in the volume Democratic Transition in the Middle East, a workers’ history of the Aswan High dam in the Journal of Water History, and an article on history workshops in Egypt in the History Workshop Journal. She has also written for Mada Masr, Jadaliyya and Ma’azif.
The guest professorship at the HZK is sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.

Information, News

TA T Tour 360° – Tieranatomisches Theater now Accessable in Virtual 360°

The Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) is now accessable virtually in 360°. Get a behind the scenes look of the exhibtion space and enter the secret life of things. There are certainly some surprises.

TATour is an exploration of the Tieranatomisches Theater that generates knowledge and wonder. We invite you to dive into materials and activities, hidden ecological and semantic processes, to dive deep into the secret life of things and of the building itself. Using immersive 360° images and subjective augmentations, we investigate other perspectives and adopt unfamiliar, usually inaccessible points of views.

As ›Spielraum‹, they reveal the transitional, transformative and ephemeral nature of the exhibition space, inhabited by many other beings than just the humans. We play with imagination as a tool for revealing presences at various scales and in various modes.

Start Tour

TA T Tour 360° was developed within the project “Object Space Agency” of the Excellenzculster Matterso of Activity in collaboration with Claudia Blümle, Yoonha Kim, Maxime Le Calve, Natalija Miodragovic, Nina Samuel, Felix Sattler, Christian Stein and Celems Winkler.

Information, News

Termination of the election procedure for the full-time Women’s Representative and her deputies

Due to the restrictions in accordance with § 14 of the current Corona-Eindämmungsverordnung of the State of Berlin, the prerequisites for a proper conduct of the committee elections in the summer semester 2020 are missing. Therefore the already initiated election procedures will be discontinued. The Central Election Board will open new election procedures as early as possible in the winter semester 2020/21.

Information, News

Guest professorships Diversity of Knowledge

The HZK welcomes the two guest professors Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Bösl and Jörg Feuchter in the study programme “Diversity of Knowledge” for the summer semester 2020.
Dr. Bösl is a private lecturer at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich.
Dr. Feuchter is employed Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the department “Regesta Imperii – catalogue of charters issued by Frederick III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (1440-1493)”.
The focus of the study program in this semester will be DNA.
Both visiting professors offer a lecture, three seminars and a workshop in this field.
In her lecture, Prof. Bösl will give an overview of the development of scientific knowledge interests, methods and research practices in the 19th and 20th centuries. In her seminars, Prof. Bösl deals with gender and disability on the one hand and the plague as a concept on the other.
For Prof. Feuchter, DNA with its interdisciplinary potential is the focus of the seminar.
And in their joint workshop, the two visiting professors work with a concrete exhibition to illuminate the mediation of cooperation between cultural and natural sciences.

Further information can be found in the curriculum of the HZK.