Staying visible inside
and outside the university
The Zukunftskolleg and its fellows show a presence in both the scientific community and the public debate by offering talks and events that are (partly) open to the whole of society.
In this chapter, you can find a selection of public events that took place in the past year.
28 November 2023
Book presentation: “Drag: A British History”
Jacob Bloomfield (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature)
About the book:
“Drag: A British History” is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form.
Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture – drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the centre of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the “permissive society” of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.
Jacob Bloomfield
29 November 2023
University Day 2023: “Connecting Researchers of Tomorrow”
in collaboration with the Hegau Bodensee Seminar
On 29 November 2023, the Zukunftskolleg organized a University Day in collaboration with the Hegau Bodensee Seminar. A ZUKOnnect Fellow and a Herz Fellow from the Zukunftskolleg offered workshops and interacted with students from the Hegau Bodensee Seminar (aged 16-18 years) to share their fascination for science around the world.
Workshop 1: Jennifer de Sousa Barros (Herz Fellow / Biology):
“From Drácula to Batman: the truth about the real ecosystems’ heroes, the bats!”
Workshop 2: Khanyile Mlotshwa (ZUKOnnect Fellow / Politics and Public Administration):
“Cities and Inequality”
Participants of the University Day 2023
07 December 2023
Round table: “Academic Careers in Africa, Asia and Latin America”
At this round table, the expert knowledge of the ZUKOnnect / Herz Fellows helped researchers from the University of Konstanz to understand academic career paths in the ZUKOnnect/Herz Fellows’ home countries. They provided in-depth knowledge on structural differences as well as discipline-specific insights into local academic careers. Researchers from Konstanz were then better informed on how to read and understand applications from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The round table addressed both researchers in the social sciences and humanities and in the STEM subjects.
Round table on “Academic Careers in Africa, Asia and Latin America”
14 December 2023
Network event: “Let’s talk about SDGs”
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are one of the hot topics in German universities. But what about the priorities in other countries? What role do the SDGs play abroad? What student initiatives are influential elsewhere?
On 14 December 2023, the Zukunftskolleg invited students from the qualification N (Quali N) to discuss different perspectives with fellows. Between frustration and hope – common around the world is the understanding about the interconnection of all 17 SDGs.
Thanks to our ZUKOnnect / Herz Fellows Ashwinder Kaur, Israel Ebhohimen and Natascha Roth-Eiching as well as Associated Fellow Maryna Lytvyn for sharing their thoughts as citizens of India, Nigeria, Chile and Ukraine.
23 February 2024
Final workshop of the GROUPTA project (“Group targeting and citizens’ responses to electoral promises and their realization”): Social constructions of target populations and their impact on political behaviour and public policy
Organized by Elisa Deiss-Helbig (Research Fellow / Politics and Public Administration
Workshop Programme
Introduction
Panel 1: Social Group Constructions and Electoral Politics
Who Deserves Recognition? How the Discrepancy Between Perceived and Desirable Changes to the Social Hierarchy Relates to Vote Choice
Magdalena Breyer, Tabea Palmtag and Delia Zollinger
Recognition Deprivation and Far Right Voters’ Sources of Subjective Status
Silja Häusermann and Delia Zollinger
Party Representation of Social Classes in Contemporary Switzerland: A Citizens’ Perspective
Line Rennwald, Anke Tresch, Simon Stückelberger and Romane Benvenuti
Panel 2: From Social Group Constructions to Policy Support
How Do Citizens Trade-off Between Targeted Pledges When Choosing a Programme? A Conjoint Experiment on Group Membership and Ideology
Isabelle Guinaudeau, André Bächtiger, Elisa Deiss-Helbig, Benjamin Guinaudeau and Theres Matthiess
Solidarity Behaviour and Age: The Identity-Solidarity Game in a Large Panel Survey of the German Resident Population
Achim Goerres, Markus Tepe and Jakob Kemper
Panel 3: Perceptions of Groups Among Policymakers and in Policymaking
Deservingness Views Among Politicians
Christian Breunig and Maj-Britt Sterba
Class, Gender and Age: Unequal Responsiveness to Different Groups
Armin Schäfer
Ministries and the Politics of Policy-Making: The Distributive Effects of Bureaucratic Politics
Julian Garritzmann
Conclusions and Perspectives
18 March 2024
Workshop: “Transversal Dialogues About the Cultural Representation of Migration Across Temporalities and Geographies”
Organized by James Wilson (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology) and Abena Yalley (ZENiT Fellow / Literature & Politics and Public Administration)
This workshop aimed to build a transdisciplinary bridge about the coming into being of discourses of representation across temporalities and geographies. To understand what a transversal application of conceptual tools means, what it does, and what it cannot do, we invited scholars already working on questions about and related to human mobility to this reflexive workshop. The workshop wanted to stimulate dialogues between different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences about the production of knowledge on cultures of human mobility from perspectives critical of racialization, infantilization and misrepresentation.
- How do we discuss issues of migration without falling into colonialist methodologies, narratives or nomenclature?
- How does each field represented in the workshop approach/think about/deal with cultural representations of migration or mobility? Are there any limitations that are inherent to our traditional methodological toolkits?
- What are the best ways/approaches for us to interrogate these regimes of representation?
- What could be the potential benefits of interdisciplinarity for migration studies? And what benefits can the other fields represented here gain from recent advances in migration studies on these issues?
- To what extent do positionality and related decolonial practices provide a potential answer to these questions?
This was a collaborative workshop by the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz.
24–25 April 2024
Workshop: “Digital Games through Muddled Pasts and Modded History”
Organized by Eduardo Luersen (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature) and James Wilson (Postdoctoral Fellow / History and Sociology)
Throughout this two-day event, we explored the epistemological and political implications that arise from the interweaving of digital games and history. Examining how the decision-making process behind history-themed games is tailored between developers, narrative designers and historical advisors, we aimed to grasp the significance placed on historical representation within the gaming industry. Our guest list included the narrative director and one of the historians involved in the development of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which was released in October 2023. Mirage is set in 9th-century Baghdad and deals with controversial historical subjects such as the memorialization of the ‘Islamic Golden Age’, the ‘translation movement’ from Greek to Arabic that was patronized by the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Zanj slave rebellion. Additionally, we invited scholars who have published on different topics connecting digital games and historical motifs, with the aim of stimulating engaged debate among the participants and the wider university community.
The workshop was led by a set of questions concerning the practical and conceptual intricacies of developing and presenting games about historical themes to a global audience:
- How is the decision-making process tailored between developers, concept designers and historical advisors?
- How are the imageries of medieval or modern conflicts and cross-cultural relationships developed within games?
- In what ways do game mechanics and structures, as well as historical tropes in entertainment software, serve as engagement tools for companies and governments?
- Under which circumstances can play transform into learning about history, and what aspects of gaming defy this shift?
- What are the different implications of digital games for historical knowledge when history is meant to be experienced as a user-oriented medium?
03 May 2024
Conference: “Z’sämme | Zusammen! Neue Impulse für die Wissenschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Baden-Württemberg und der Schweiz”
Together with the University of Konstanz, the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg hosted an all-day conference at the University of Konstanz on 3 May 2024, which was dedicated to scientific relations between Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland.
Against the backdrop of Switzerland’s still pending association to “Horizon Europe”, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the aim of the event was to focus on the status and prospects of scientific cooperation between Switzerland and the EU – a topic that is of great importance to Baden-Württemberg, not only due to its geographical proximity.
In the presence of Minister Petra Olschowski, the conference gave representatives from academia and politics from both Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland the opportunity to express their views and to analyze the current status of scientific relations between the two regions and the challenges of cross-border cooperation.
The purpose of various discussion formats, poster presentations with the participation of the Zukunftskolleg and a moderated panel discussion was to identify challenges, but also alternative possibilities for collaboration in science and research. Convincing practical examples of cross-border co-operation projects served as points of reference.
The University of Konstanz, with its close proximity to Switzerland and corresponding scientific partnerships, was the ideal venue for cross-border encounters.
Professor Markus Rhomberg, Managing Director of the Lake Constance Arts and Sciences Association, chaired the event. During and after the event, there was an opportunity for discussions and personal exchange.
Panel discussion on “Opportunities and perspectives for cooperation in research and science”
22 May 2024
Public performance lecture: “Beirut-Sarajevo Intersections”
A Performance Lecture with Gruia Bădescu (Research Fellow / History and Sociology) and Sabine el Chamaa (filmmaker)
Gruia Bădescu and Sabine el Chamaa
Abstract
In his research on post-war reconstruction and memory, Gruia Bădescu reflects on the distinctive trajectories of two cities that some have put together in a category of “conflict cities”: Beirut and Sarajevo. Similar in their Ottoman histories, their imperial makeovers and their religious diversity, the two cities differ in other aspects, including the way they approached the legacies of wars of the late twentieth century: an obsession with memory in Sarajevo and an enforced amnesia in Beirut. The question of contrasting the two cities and embodying experience and memory has also emerged in the work of Lebanese filmmaker and scholar Sabine El Chamaa. Beirut-Sarajevo Intersections is a visual project resulting from the collaboration of the Zukunftskolleg research fellow and the filmmaker, funded by a grant from the Zukunftskolleg’s Intersectoral Cooperation Programmet. The project examines how the trajectories of these cities intersect, interrogating whether and how their urban histories, memories and imaginaries mirror each other. Aside from the dialogue between the two cities, the project emerged as a dialogue between approaches: between the one rooted in urban history, architectural hermeneutics and memory studies (Bădescu) and filmmaking, particularly feminist traditions with a focus on the intimate and the domestic experience of space and memory (El Chamaa). Based on the research and footage in the two cities and on the continuous dialogue between approaches, the event in Konstanz was a performance lecture, which transcends the traditional academic lecture format, serving as a platform where protagonists transform the lecture into a dynamic space that combines film, storytelling and academic debate, blurring the boundaries between artistic work and scholarly research and reflection.
22 May 2024
Public talk: Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth About the Past
Gruia Badescu (Research Fellow / History and Sociology) in conversation with Author Robert Bevan (London)
Abstract
In Monumental Lies, Robert Bevan examines the weaponization and manipulation of the past in culture wars around the globe. This talk addressed uses of monuments, architecture and cities as material evidence of human history, and how our understanding of this heritage impacts our lives.
Biography
Robert Bevan is an author and journalist writing on architecture, heritage and cities. He is the author of Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past (Verso), a Book of the Year of the Financial Times and The Art Newspaper. His previous book, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, was described as “ground-breaking” by the New York Review of Books.
Gruia Bădescu and Robert Bevan
24 June 2024
Public talk: “Troll Security – Espionage in Virtual Worlds”
Peter Krapp (Senior Fellow / University of California Irvine)
Organized by Eduardo Luersen (Postdoctoral Fellow / Literature)
Abstract:
Are massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds potential havens for activities that require a systemic response in the name of national security? This is the question raised – and, as it belatedly turned out, rather extensively explored – by more than one secret service over the past decade. The rise of online gaming has not only changed the way we think about role-playing but also transformed the strategy genre; networked computing has also spawned virtual worlds that are venues for congregating, exploring, communicating and commerce. They rely on data flows that are minutely logged and analyzed – not only by publishers of games and virtual worlds themselves, who have an obvious interest in monitoring them for operation and feedback, but also by secret services.