Research field: Practicing Place – Interdisciplinary cultural studies research on localization
The DFG Research Training Group, ‘Practicing Place: Socio-Cultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations’ (GRK 2589) is dedicated to critically reflecting on the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘placing’ from an interdisciplinary perspective. The project thereby addresses important desiderata in basic cultural studies research. Places and placings are at the heart of discussions about complex global interrelations, especially in an era of deepening transnational interdependencies and seemingly borderless communication networks. The research group’s guiding principle is that places can only be analyzed dynamically as practicing places. In the context of new geopolitical confrontations, ecological challenges and heightened social polarization, conflictuality of practicings of place has emerged as the central direction of the second funding phase, from October 2025. Practices of localization are examined as central configurations of conflict and investigated on the basis of three thematic research areas:
- Placings of the political and place-based conceptions of the public sphere;
- the co-production of contested places by humans and non-human entities; and
- imaginaries of place in the context of post- and decoloniality, geo- and ecopoetics.
Participating disciplines:
American Studies, Archaeology, History, Human Geography, Journalism, Art History, Latin American Studies, Literary Studies, Philology, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, Economic Geography
Participating institutions:
Graduate College “Practicing Place – Sociocultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations” (GRK 2589/2)
- Contact: Prof. Dr. Robert Schmidt (Chair of Process-Oriented Sociology), spokesperson for the GRK
Contact for the research field:
- Prof. Dr. Jens Hogreve, Vice President for Research and Early Career Researchers
