Category Archives: News

BUA, Knowledge Exchange, News, Open Humboldt Freiräume, Third Mission

Universities have a civic duty

In this first networking event for knowledge exchange with society, experts and academics from Oxford and Berlin came together at Humboldt University’s Center for Cultural Technique to discuss the topic of public engagement.

The historic lecture hall and the object laboratory of the Center for Cultural Techniques provided the perfect space – the international speakers contributed the specific professional expertise for this November event: the topic of “Researching with Society – International Perspectives” brought together 50 scientists and science-related stakeholders to exchange ideas on how researching with society can succeed. The importance, possibilities and techniques of participatory research and the role of universities were discussed in lectures and workshops.

A highlight of the day was the keynote speech by Dr. Victoria McGuinness, Head of Public Engagement and Head of the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) at the University of Oxford. She emphasized the changing role of universities – from a static educational institution to an institution with social responsibility and an open space for discourse – and at the same time highlighted the importance of every scientist as a “doorway to the university” for non-academic communities.

Talks and workshops

On invitation by the office for Knowledge Exchange with Society at Humboldt University’s Center for Cultural Technique and the TD-Lab – Laboratory for Transdisciplinary Research of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), participants were able to explore the methods and impact of participatory research in practical workshops and network with other public engagement experts.

For example, the workshop “What is Public Engagement with Research in the Humanities?” with Dr. Victoria McGuinness offered the opportunity to talk about motivation and support systems needed to bring researchers into exchange with non-academic publics.

In the workshop “Developing Compelling Impact Stories” with Pavel Ovseiko, DPhil MSc PGDip, Senior Research Fellow in Health Policy and Management at John Radcliffe Hospital (University of Oxford) the participants looked at ways in which social impact can be defined, collected, communicated and established in a meaningful way.

Ausblick auf 2025

The exchange on public engagement will be continued next year and opportunities for further training – such as the recently launched cooperation with the Berlin School of Public Engagement and Open Science – will be expanded. The aim is to support scientists who are conducting or planning to conduct research projects in participatory ways.

Questions, suggestions and/or specific ideas can be sent to wissensaustausch.hzk@hu-berlin.de 

Photos by Stefan Klenke, Humboldt University

Knowledge Exchange, News, Object Lab, Third Mission

Object Lab: Seed Funding for Teaching

The program ‘Object Lab: Seed Funding for Teaching’ supports teachers and students across disciplines in shaping academic questions and seminar work in cooperation with society. The aim is to integrate questions, experience and knowledge from society into teaching and university work with students, to learn from various actors in civil society, culture or politics and create an equal exchange.

The office for “Knowledge Exchange with Society” at the Center for Cultural Technique supports seminars that work in a transdisciplinary or participatory way and include elements of exchange with society or public engagement. This may include:

  • Cooperation with appropriate societal actors / organizations
  • Cooperation in the organization or presentation of course content; in the form of co-teaching or using other methods that aim to incorporate expertise from outside academia
  • Course design with aspects of community-based research/learning
  • Cooperation with society within a seminar by students, in course projects or final theses
  • Cooperation with social groups or organizations for the presentation/display of course results
  • Courses that combine material practices, object- or body-centered approaches in teaching with external collaborations

Support is provided through:

  • Funding of course materials up to 1,000 euros per seminar
  • Use of space at the Object Lab on the North Campus, including flexible room equipment
  • Occasional event assistance by arrangement
  • Support/advice from HU team Knowledge exchange with society (approx. 2h per week)

Eligible for funding are:

  • Courses that are transdisciplinary or include elements of exchange with society
  • BA or MA seminars by members of the Center for Cultural Technique, HU Berlin
  • Seminars that can take place in the Object Lab on Campus North or establish a spatial reference to the space through workshops/parts of the seminar work
  • Seminars that take place in SoSe 2025 or WiSe 2025/26
  • Material costs that are spent for coursework within the calendar year 2025 (expenses are paid by the Center for Cultural Technique or the assigned WBS element)

Members of the Center for Cultural Technique are eligible to apply in the first funding phase:

  • Please contact Xenia Muth or Leonie Kubigsteltig or send a short inquiry to hzk@hu-berlin.de to register your interest
  • Expression of interest for the SoSe 2025 should be received by 26.01.2025
Discussion, Event, Exhibition, News

Parrot Terristories: Rethinking More-than-Human History, Conservation, Care, and Colonial Legacies

The transdisciplinary roundtable, which is part of Hörner/Antlfinger: Parrot Terristories exhibition at TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater, investigates intersections of more-than-human global history, animal agency, conservation, care, and colonial legacies. The panel examines how African grey parrots make culture in freedom—expressing complex social behaviors, cognition, and adaptability—and how captivity disrupts these processes. This commodification of parrots serves as a lens for broader histories of exploitation and the ethical challenges of conservation. The roundtable further explores the role of indigenous knowledge and practices in rethinking conservation and highlights the need to decolonize approaches that reflect interconnected human and nonhuman histories. By critiquing the colonial provenance of natural history collections, the discussion reveals how power dynamics have shaped preservation ethics and interpretation. Linking these perspectives, the roundtable envisions equitable conservation and museum practices that emphasize shared responsibilities across species and cultures.

The event will be held in English.    

Caption: Ölpalme auf Danniel Mbahurire’s Land, Uganda 2022, Foto: HörnerAntlfinger (links); A. Goering, in Carl Hennicke, Der Graupapagei in Freiheit und Gefangenschaft, 1895 (rechts)


When:

Tour of the exhibition with artists Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger: December 12, 2024 at 5 p.m.

Round table: December 12, 2024, at 6  to 8.15 p.m.

Venue: TA T — Tieranatomisches Theater, Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, HU Berlin Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13/Haus 3

Roundtable Discussion at TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater

Participants

Nancy Jacobs, Brown University, Providence, is a historian and author of the book The Global Grey Parrot: The Worldwide History of a Charismatic African Animal https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/global-grey-parrot-worldwide-history-charismatic-african-animalhttps://www.brown.edu/news/2024-02-29/grey-parrots She is very much concerned with animals as historical actors and parrots as political, cultural, and world-making creatures. She is also interested in human efforts to improve life for parrots in captivity and to conserve the birds’ existence in their native forests.

 Katja Kaiser, Museum for Natural History Berlin, Research associate in the project “Guidelines for the handling of natural history collections from colonial contexts”. Katja Kaiser collaborated with Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger on their work “One of Thirtysix” that traces the provenance of single grey parrot specimen from the museum’s collection https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/about/team/katja.kaiser

André Krebber, guest fellow in cultural history and theory at LeipzigLab at Leipzig University and adjunct lecturer at the University of Kassel. André’s interested in knowledge cultures and how they shape and are shaped by human-nature relations with a particular focus on the role of nonhuman animals therein to respond to the current environmental crisis. In his forthcoming book The Forgotten Animal, he proposes an aesthetic practice of animal remembrance that makes the recognition of animal self-determination the foundation for overcoming appropriating relations to nature. https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb05/fachgruppen-und-institute/geschichte/lehrgebiet/sozial-und-kulturgeschichte-human-animal-studies/dr-andre-krebber

Munyaradzi Elton Sagiya, Lecturer, Culture and Heritage Studies (CHS) at Bindura University, Zimbawe and Research Fellow at inherit. heritage in transformation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research interests include decolonising heritage conservation practices, African archeology, and museology.

https://inherit.hu-berlin.de/fellows/munyaradzi-elton-sagiya

Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger are professors of multispecies storytelling at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and have been living together in a multispecies household with grey parrots for over 20 years. Their installations, videos and sculptures deal with relationships between humans, animals and machines and open up critical perspectives on changeable social constructs as well as utopian visions of equal interaction. Their communal living with non-human animals is characterised by shared social actions and how these produce a shared space. In 2014, Hörner/Antlfinger founded the interspecies collective CMUK with the grey parrots Clara and Karl, who are also contributing artistic works to the current exhibition.

Felix Sattler is head and curator of the TA T – Exhibition Research Space at the Centre for Cultural Techniques, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His curatorial strategy aims to foster dialogue between a variety of communities. Felix Sattler’s projects have addressed topics as diverse as the art and design history of unicellular algae, an archaeology of the multiple past, and the postcolonial controversies surrounding museums and human remains.

Contact:

Felix Sattler,  felix.sattler@culture.hu-berlin.de

Collection, Event, Lecture Series, News

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

News, Object of the Month, Object of the Month

Object of the month: Towns of the Near East as reflected in the Sammlung Historischer Palästinabilder (Collection of Historical Pictures of Palestine)

Object of the month 11/2024

On August 26, 1907, Hugo Gressmann (1877–1927), a professor of Old Testament/Hebrwe Bible at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, writes to his colleague and friend Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932) in Giessen that he has „den Plan, neue Lichtbilder machen zu lassen. Die Lichtbilder sollen dienen für den Unterricht in der höheren Schule und an der Univ.[ersität]. … Da Prof. Schäfer vom ägypt. Museum mir seine tatkräftige Hilfe zugesagt hat und da mir auch die Diapositive der D[eutschen]O[rient]G[esellschaft] zur Verfügung stehen, hoffe ich die Sammlung unseres Seminars beträchtlich zu vermehren. Das würde auch mir hübsche Drucke geben: Illustrationen für A[ltes]T[estament]., besonders profane, Kulturgeschichtliches, an denen es zur Zeit ganz fehlt.“

The here mentioned collection forms the basis of the Sammlung Historischer Palästinabilder (Collection of Historical Pictures of Palestine), which is still located at the Old Testament Seminar at the Faculty of Theology at Humboldt Universität. It includes around 2000 glass plate slides, which were mainly collected by Hugo Gressmann until his sudden death on a lecture tour through the United States of America in 1927. The photographs were taken between the late 19th and early 20th century. They aim to visually capture the biblical world. Accordingly, the photographs show images from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Levant. The focus is on locations mentioned in the Bible. These are now in the territory of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. The motifs include landscapes, ancient and contemporary buildings (temples, churches, mosques), people, animals and plants. The vast majority of glass plate slides were produced by professional publishers.

Gressmann had travelled to Israel/Palestine in 1906/1907 as part of a regional studies course run by the Deutsches Evangelisches Institut für Altertumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes (German Protestant Institute of Archaeology of the Holy Land), which was founded in 1900 and is still based in Jerusalem and Amman today. He took numerous photographs himself during his travels. The experiences he had on this trip left a lasting impression on him, and he firmly embedded the study of material culture in the canon of methods used by scholars of the Old Testament. His Altorientalische Bilder zum Alten Testament (1909, second edition 1927) became a standard work. As a representative of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and in accordance with his understanding of theology as cultural studies, it was important to him to understand the biblical texts in the context of ancient oriental and Egyptian texts and images, as well as against the background of the concrete conditions of life. He also endeavoured to communicate his findings to an interested public beyond the confines of the university, in both word and image. One medium he used was the Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher für die deutsche christliche Gegenwart, published at the beginning of the 20th century by Friedrich Michael Schiele, in which he provided information about the current excavations in Palestine (RV III/10, 1908).

The Sammlung Historischer Palästinabilder now also includes glass plate slides from the estate of Gottfried Quell (1896–1976), a scholar of the Old Testament from Berlin. The loan of the library of the Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas (German Association for the Exploration of Palestine), which has existed since 1877, means that it is very well documented. The collection is of great importance for historical topography, for the history of archaeology, for the landscape and urban surface structure of pre-industrial Israel/Palestine, for the history of photography, but also for historical ethnology and anthropology, as well as for the Eurocentric image of the Orient in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nr. 1 (Gaza): American Colony Magic Lantern Slides, Fr. Vester & Co, Jerusalem, Palestine.
Nr. 2 (Aleppo): Th. Benzinger, Lichtbildverlag, Stuttgart.
Nr. 3 (Beirut): American Colony Magic Lantern Slides, Fr. Vester & Co, Jerusalem, Palestine.
Nr. 4 (Baalbek): Kunst-Verlag Bruno Hentschel, Leipzig.
Nr. 5 (Jerusalem): Kunst-Verlag Bruno Hentschel, Leipzig.

Numerous photographs show important towns in the Middle East. For the object of the month for November 2024, five views of towns or individual buildings on the ground of these towns from the time around 1920 have been selected from this group of motifs. These are sites that are the focus of international attention due to the current political situation and that are under great threat due to the armed conflict. Photo no. 1 shows the minaret of the Great Mosque of Gaza, which was built on the site of the 12th-century church of St. John the Baptist. Photo no. 2 offers a view of Aleppo in colour. Photo no. 3 provides a glimpse of Beirut. Photo no. 4 shows the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek. Photo no. 5 offers a view of Jerusalem, from the Mount of Olives over the Kidron Valley to the Dome of the Rock, with a Jewish community gathered for a lament for the dead. The tears shed here may be representative of all the tears that people in the Middle East are currently experiencing in the face of the destruction in their immediate surroundings.

Sascha Gebauer, Rüdiger Liwak and Peter Welten provide comprehensive documentation of the Sammlung Historischer Palästinabilder in the book Pilger, Forscher, Abenteurer. Das Heilige Land in frühen Fotografien der Sammlung Greßmann, Leipzig 2014. The passage quoted at the beginning comes from a collection of letters from Gressmann to Gunkel, which is to be critically edited by Sascha Gebauer and Markus Witte as part of a current research project. To the life and work of Hugo Gressmann see Sascha Gebauer, Hugo Greßmann und sein Programm der Religionsgeschichte, Berlin/Boston 2020, and Markus Witte, ‘Hugo Gressmann (1877–1927) – Ein Leben für die Geschichte der Religion,’ Biblische Notizen 179 (2018): 108–120.

Website of the Sammlung Historischer Palästinabilder: 
https://www.theologie.hu-berlin.de/de/professuren/stellen/at/palaestina

List of figures: 
Nr. 1 (Gaza): American Colony Magic Lantern Slides, Fr. Vester & Co, Jerusalem, Palestine.
Nr. 2 (Aleppo): Th. Benzinger, Lichtbildverlag, Stuttgart.
Nr. 3 (Beirut): American Colony Magic Lantern Slides, Fr. Vester & Co, Jerusalem, Palestine.
Nr. 4 (Baalbek): Kunst-Verlag Bruno Hentschel, Leipzig.
Nr. 5 (Jerusalem): Kunst-Verlag Bruno Hentschel, Leipzig.

Source of figures: 
https://rs.cms.hu-berlin.de/palaestina/pages/search.php?search=%21collection2&k=4b9927904c

Contact: 
Prof. Dr. Markus Witte
Seminar für Altes Testament
Theologische Fakultät
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
markus.witte@hu-berlin.de

Event, Lecture, News

Prof. Sharon Macdonald will give the Schöne Lecture on November 21, 2024

Prof. Sharon Macdonald, Director of the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, will give the Schöne Lecture 2024 at the Technische Universität Berlin on November 21, 2024. The Schöne Lecture is organized annually by the Institute of Art History and Historical Urban Studies at TU Berlin and the Richard Schöne Society for Museum History. With her lecture “Which Museum Histories?”, Sharon Macdonald will further deepen the topic of museum history in terms of cultural theory with a view to museums and cultural heritage.

The event in the evening is both the highlight and conclusion of a conference at which experts will reflect on the concrete significance of museum history at three locations in three afternoon panels: in academic teaching and training, in museum practice and in public discourse.

The occasion of the conference is the 30th anniversary of the Richard Schöne Society for Museum History. Since 1994, it has been committed to historical research into the institution of the museum and continues to provide new space and impetus for this. The association would like to use this anniversary in 2024 to ask questions about the history of museum history itself and to debate the current relevance of museum history.

The lecture will be held in English. Admission is free.

Date:
The lecture and discussion event will take place on Thursday, November 21, 2024, from 12:30 pm to 6:15 pm. Afterwards, Prof. Dr. Sharon Macdonald will give the Schöne Lecture 2024 from 7 to 9 pm.

Venue:
Technical University of Berlin
Large Senate Hall (H1035)
Main building, 1st floor
Street of June 17, 135
10623 Berlin

An event organized by the Richard-Schöne-Gesellschaft für Museumsgeschichte e.V. on the occasion of its 30th anniversary in cooperation with the Technische Universität Berlin, sponsored by the Richard Stury-Stiftung and Ursula Eckert-Stiftung.

Further information and program

Event, Lecture Series, News

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.

Collection, Event, Lecture Series, News

Invitation to the lecture series “Hands On. Research Perspectives on Collections”, November 11, 2024 – Die anatomischen Präparate und Modelle der HfBK Dresden. Zur De- und Reaktivierung einer Lehrsammlung

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 be held:

Die anatomischen Präparate und Modelle der HfBK Dresden. Zur De- und Reaktivierung einer Lehrsammlung
Prof. Ivo Mohrmann (HFBK Dresden) & Jakob Fuchs (Deutsches Hygienemuseum Dresden)

The Anatomical Collection of the Dresden University of Fine Arts (HfBK) is one of the oldest and best-preserved collections of artists’ anatomy in Europe. The lecture describes its eventful history from its foundation to the present day. Thanks to a project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the university has been able to hold courses and public tours in the rooms of the collection again since 2020 and the almost 700 specimens and models are available for lending again.

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 11, 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.

More information on participation can be found here.

Plakat Ringvorlesung Sammlungen
Ringvorlesung „Hands On. Forschungsperspektiven auf Sammlungen“, 11.11.2024
Knowledge Exchange, News

Sensing Common Grounds. Towards Collaborative Speculation

Roundtable Discussion by Cluster of excellence “Matters of Activity” on November 14, 2024, 6:30 pm

The roundtable addresses current challenges at the intersection of critical humanities scholarship and design research by discussing nuanced means of knowing and making. It attends to collaborative speculation in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts to sense and unearth common grounds through the reality of the ecological predicament. Together with our guests, we ask about the narratives, prototypes, norms, materials and media that hold knowledge (and non-knowledge) of such speculations and public imaginaries: How to unlearn and unmake dominant modes of worldmaking by cutting across disciplines, foregrounding embodied knowledges, situated inquiry and extra-academic encounters?

The event will be held in English.                      

Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, HU Berlin Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13/Haus 3

 

Event, News, Open Humboldt Freiräume, Project

Researching together, finding solutions together

The INTERSECT project brings together researchers, civil society organisations and refugee women from Ukraine. A panel discussion on 4 December 2024 marks the provisional conclusion of the project, which is supported by the Open Humboldt Freiräume funding line.

How do refugee mothers from Ukraine manage to gain a foothold in Germany? What particular challenges stand in their way? And what can politics, civil society and academia do to better support them? Gökce Yurdakul, Professor of Social Conflict at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, is investigating these questions in her ‘INTERSECT’ project.

The researcher works closely with the „Welcome Alliance“, an alliance of civil society organisations, foundations and state institutions that campaigns for the humane integration of refugees.
On 4 December 2024, she is organising a public discussion event together with her project partners. Here, women refugees, experts from politics, civil society and academia will have their say in order to jointly develop solutions that enable long-term and sustainable integration.

Gökce Yurdakul is receiving support for her project from the Open Humboldt Freiräume funding programme. In order to be able to concentrate fully on this research project, she has been granted a semester of teaching leave. The initiative is sponsored by the Berlin University Alliance and specifically encourages researchers to promote dialogue between the university and society and to develop innovative solutions to social challenges.

In a detailed article about the project, Gökce Yurdakul, Lilija Oleksiienko as an affected woman from Ukraine and other project partners report on their work and goals.

Read now

Register for the panel discussion