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The 2024 annual conference of the Collaborative Researcher Center (CRC) 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces brought together research at the intersection of space and conflict. It tackled the question of how […]

How do conflicts over and within space unfold? In this first of a two-part blog post, we highlight some of the answers give by scholars from various disciplines and research projects gave to this critical question at the CRC’s annual conference in October.

In June 2024, four CRC projects brought their empirical cases to the “Comparison Clinic”. Together with guest researcher Jennifer Robinson and CRC PIs Séverine Marguin and Silke Steets, this workshop invited the participants to explore the prospects of comparative analysis. This report summarizes the discussions and highlights how valuable comparisons are for the development of concepts such as refiguration.

By creating maps, researchers can gain insights into the social and cultural dimensions of urban, rural, hybrid, and mediated landscapes. Mapping can also be used to analyze historical changes, and to monitor ongoing changes and future developments. The objective of our workshop was to create space for transfer and exchange, especially about the interdisciplinary experience and body of knowledge produced in the first phase of the CRC. The different disciplinary backgrounds of the speakers demonstrate the transdisciplinary potential of mapping methods for the research of socio-spatial phenomena.

What is your favorite waterbody? What do you like about it? Chances are that you thought of a lake or a river, maybe even an entire ocean. For the collaborative workshop at the CRC 1265 on ‘water, flows, space, and other stuff’, Moritz Kasper and Afra Foli decided to use the notion of ‘waterbody’ to talk about slightly unorthodox containers of water: an urban river-turned-drain in Accra and bright yellow jerry cans in Nairobi.

The workshop “Space and Power from a Gender and Intersectional Perspective” was part of the International Participatory Summer School on “Power and Space”, which took place from September 13th to […]

What happens to scalar thinking when the analytical distinctions between global and local as well as human and non-human spaces no longer make sense, especially given the engagement with climate change and the planetary in the social sciences and humanities? These were the challenging questions that PIs Ignacio Farías and Silke Steets posed to the speakers and audience at the 5th international CRC symposium “Spatial Figures in the Anthropocene” on 5th and 6th October 2023. Scholars across regions and disciplines came together for two days of discussions, panels, coffee conversations, a metaverse animation, and a lecture performance to advance, share, and inspire thinking and activities on spatiality that address the anthropogenic impact on Earth.

How is power reflected in space and how is it recreated? How can practices contribute to (re)defining power relations in different spaces? These questions and many more were discussed during the International Participatory Summer School on “Power and Space”. The school brought together scholars from four continents across a wide range of disciplines. Organized by a team of doctoral researchers of the CRC, the school took a participatory approach by combining participant-led workshops and presentations with keynotes and workshops led by activists, scholars, and artists. Within this framework, participants reflected on theories of power and space, as well as their own positionality. Through excursions in Berlin, the school moved beyond the academic space, enabling participants to experience physical and political spaces in the city.