Project Areas

To capture the characteristics of refiguration in empirical research in analytically precise ways, we investigate subjective experiences and spatial knowledge as well as spatial interrelations between circulation and order, and – as a mediating element – the level of communicative actions, interactions and practices. The empirical research conducted in our 15 subprojects is therefore organized into the following project areas: “Knowledge of Space”, “Spaces of Digital Mediatization”, and “Circulation and Order”. In addition, central projects take on tasks concerning the research network as a whole.

Project Area A | Knowledge of Space

Project Area A explores the constitution and change of subjective knowledge of space. In the second phase of the CRC, the project area focuses specifically on action-relevant knowledge in contrasting spaces and asks how individuals resolve conflicts and tensions that arise from the diverse entanglements of different spatial figures. In addition, the project area examines how intergenerational tensions, gender and class conflicts mark changes in spatial knowledge. Another common focus of all projects in project area A is the relevance of infrastructures for subjective spatial knowledge and their significance in the subjective arrangements of spatial figures.

Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Angela Million

Project Area B | Spaces of Digital Mediatization

Project Area B concerns itself with digitized mediatized actions. In the first phase, it explored the fundamental question of how processes of mediatization play out, how they affect communicative actions and spatial arrangements, and in what way we may speak of polycontextural spatial arrangements. In the CRC’s second phase, the project area focuses more explicitly on processes of digitalization and their spatialization. The associated subprojects examine digitalization in professional-institutional actions, in private actions, as well as in actions of both smaller and larger communities. In addition to urban areas, we are now also looking at rural areas.

Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Silke Steets

Project Area C | Circulation and Order

Project Area C investigates the interrelationship between circulation and the formation of order from the analytical perspective of regimes. What underlines this investigation is the idea that some regimes order circulation, but new forms of circulation also challenge, reshape or collapse established regimes, while in some cases new regimes also emerge or come into conflict with established regimes. In the second phase of the CRC, politics and migration as the main thematic focal points of research are supplemented by economic, media-sociological and anthropological analyses of order formation under conditions of circulation (especially in relation to digital platforms).

Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Stefan Kirchner

Central Projects

The infrastructure project (INF), the public relations project (Ö) and the central administration project (Z) deal with processes and issues that span the entire network of the CRC. Each of these projects take on different tasks related to internal networking and interdisciplinary exchange, the development of partnerships as well as knowledge transfer and external communication. It is here that we, for example, test out strategies for joint data management and the continued use of our collected data, strive to communicate research results and processes to a broader audience, and explore artistic approaches to the topics of the CRC. The public relations project also conducts its own independent research informed by approaches within contemporary art. The administrative project, meanwhile, functions as the central interface for the CRC's organizational and coordinative concerns.