While we have previously discussed texts by Seth Giddings twice in this format, this time we have the honor of speaking with Seth Giddings himself (!) about his arguments in “Toy Theory”, his groundbreaking book that re-examines the tension between tradition and disruption in children’s everyday digital play. Drawing on selected films from our research, we discuss scale, tactility and manipulability/operability, the imaginary and the imaginative, and kinesthesia as key concepts in Giddings’ work on toys and play.

We are delighted that Seth Giddings will be joining our meeting, and we warmly invite everyone who is interested to join us.

If you would like to take part, please send an email to astrid.vogelpohl[æt]uni-siegen.de to receive the Zoom link.

Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

Prof . Dr. John Borneman (Princeton): Der Ruf der Loreley: Verlust, r e t u r n und die Neue Rechte in Deutschland (Publikumsgespräch)

Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

————

The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.

10:00 – 12:00 Uhr     Talk and Discussion: Katherine Dennis on “Working Without Certainty: Resilience, Capacity and the Research Brain” (AH-A 217/18)

12:00 – 14:00 Uhr     Lunch (AH-A 210/11)

The event will be in English

We kindly ask you to register via e-mail to Selina Seibt by 23 Oct 2026.

About the talk “Working Without Certainty: Resilience, Capacity and the Research Brain”

Research asks people to invest years of effort in questions whose answers are unknown, while funding and career progression stay uncertain too. The session introduces the neurocognitive foundations of stress, capacity and adaptation in academic work, and how prediction, perceived control, belonging and meaning shape a researcher’s ability to sustain effort. Participants leave with a clearer understanding of their own responses, practical ways to protect their attention and recovery, and a sense of where they can act.

Psychologist and neuropsychologist Katherine Dennis González, co-founder of Expanding Circles, introduces the neurocognitive foundations of stress, capacity and adaptation in academic work. She explores how prediction, perceived control, belonging and meaning shape a researcher’s ability to sustain effort, and how unevenly some of these are shared across academia. Participants leave with a clearer understanding of their own responses, practical ways to protect their attention and recovery, and a sense of where they can act. With over 12 years of clinical practice, she works at the intersection of nervous system science and human behaviour. She leads individual and corporate programmes and works with film festivals and institutions across Europe. She is currently completing research at Sigmund Freud University Berlin, examining how people make sense of stress, and how those explanations influence self-blame, agency and adaptive action.

Expanding Circles is a Berlin-based psychological education and movement company, founded by psychologist Katherine Dennis González and training scientist Sillse Giesen. We teach people how the nervous system works under pressure, uncertainty and change, and help them turn that understanding into practical tools for sustaining their capacity. We work with organisations, cultural institutions, film festivals and individuals across Europe.

www.expandcircles.com

www.katherinedgonzalez.com 

About the series

The “Diversity Lunch” series is a cooperation between the CRCs “Media of Cooperation” and “Transformations of the Popular” and invites all members and interested people to discuss current topics and issues relating to diversity in science.

Participation is possible online as well as in presence in the Herren­garten. After the event, we invite you to a small snack/lunch in the Herren­garten (AH-A 208/209)!

At present, the discourse on artificial intelligence permeates a vast number of societal domains. We encounter it in academia as well as in journalism, in political, social, and cultural debates, in the economy, in modern working life, in medicine, in education, and tragically even in warfare. In short: discussions about artificial intelligence concern all of us in central and significant areas of life.

Opinions, assessments, perceptions, and evaluations of artificial intelligence — particularly regarding its opportunities and risks — diverge widely. For some, technological or machine intelligence represents a great promise for a better future. Others, however, fear severe social consequences arising from the use of AI.

These debates are not new. For decades, the concept of artificial intelligence has repeatedly experienced new waves of attention, booms and busts in the public sphere. Since the very beginning of the discourse on artificial intelligence, one recurring question has been how much “intelligence” truly resides in artificial intelligence.

With the surge in attention generated by AI chatbots and the economic success of predominantly US‑based companies in the field of artificial intelligence, public discourse has reached a new peak in recent years. The prevailing conviction is that in the future none of us will be able to avoid applications of artificial intelligence — not as individuals, not as users, not as citizens, not as companies, not as governments, and not as actors in the realms of business, politics, or public administration.

What is contested, however, is the fact that power over AI applications lies in the hands of only a few companies and the governments aligned with them — and that these AI instruments of power have consequences for all of us that we cannot foresee, due to mechanisms and algorithms that are opaque, incomprehensible, and secret. Key risks identified include the unlimited accumulation of citizens’ and users’ data by companies and governments, as well as phenomena such as “surveillance capitalism”, “technological imperialism”, and “AI-based warfare”.

Against this backdrop, our conference is dedicated to the potential downsides and risks of artificial intelligence applications, as well as possible counter‑strategies. This intentionally encompasses a diverse range of fields of application and associated risks:

• Negative impacts on the world of work, labor policy, and workplace design
• Abusive and unlimited commercial use of personal data
• Extensive surveillance of consumers, users, and citizens
• AI‑supported warfare, intelligent targeting, weapons, drone wars
• AI-enhanced agriculture, touching the very foundations of human survival: food, water, and energy. As a new instrument for reshaping control over essential resources and further marginalizing local communities (new food barons)
• Surveillance Capitalism, technology‑driven imperialism and digital neo‑colonialism
• Disinformation, deepfakes, fake news, alternative facts — consequences for the media landscape and the perception of truth
• Risks of centralized infrastructures and monopolies, for example in Silicon Valley or other technology‑based industrial hubs
• Enforcement of geopolitical interests and power claims through technological dominance
• The rise of authoritarian, anti‑democratic, populist technocracies and kleptocracies
• Impact on education, schooling, academic teaching, researching, authoring and publication practices: erosion of scientific quality standards
• AI undermining Humanity, Equality and Fairness: feminist and emancipatory perspectives, human and civil rights concerns

Our three days conference is aiming at academic scholars (e,g., from socio-informatics, media sciences and human–computer interaction, sociology, political science, law and economics), as well as political actors, civil society activists, journalists and a politically engaged expert audience.

Conference date: Thursday, Oct. 29 to Saturday, Oct. 31 2026
Conference venue: University of Siegen, Germany
Conference language: English
Conference format: On-Site, maybe hybrid
Conference fee: Free of charge
Conference layout: We plan for an interactive format for exchange, discussion, co-creation in workshops, working groups, round tables. But additionally we will invite international experts to give some input.
Conference Registration: https://darksidesofai.wineme.wiwi.uni-siegen.de/registration-2/

Conference Chair:
Gihan Abouzeid (University of Siegen)
Jacob Hochhaus (University of Siegen)
Markus Rohde (University of Siegen)
and Volker Wulf (University of Siegen)

Organizational Chair
Kathrin Hoffmann (University of Siegen)

Most subprojects already have a DMP. This session is about keeping it useful, how to treat the DMP as a document that grows with your data collection, what to revise and when, and how the DMP connects to storage, archiving and the requirements that come later in the project. Practical work on your own plan, not a lecture on templates.

The workshop ist for all CRC members.

Here is the event link: https://umfragen.uni-siegen.de/index.php/785387?lang=en

Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

Fabian Lüke, MA (Köln): Loss, Return, Re-Integration? Moravian Mission Heritage and Lived Religion in District Six, Cape Town 

As an urban space marked by histories of forced removals, Cape Town’s District Six has been the subject of and stage for ongoing political, legal, and social struggles over restorative justice in post-apartheid South Africa. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2024 with members of the Moravian Church (MCSA), this contribution examines how the ‘new’ Moravian Hill congregation in District Six engages in the re-making of its chapel as a religious heritage site, and how congregants sense and make sense of past and present experiences of loss through religious registers rooted in eighteenth-century Pietism.

I therefore take a closer look at the local tradition of Moravian house blessings against the background of land restitution, urban redevelopment, and the return of formerly displaced residents to District Six. Following Ernesto de Martino’s notion of religious re-integration (1956/2012), I show how the practice of house blessing restructures relationships between people, spaces, and different temporalities, by creating a relational topography within the religious intimacy of the Moravian Hill congregation.

Moravian actors mobilize tangible and intangible manifestations of “Moravian Mission Heritage” to navigate experiences of loss and articulate senses of past, present, and future belonging in District Six. In this process, the re-making of the congregation and its church becomes a way of negotiating return in a contested urban space where the hopes and expectations of returnees encounter the complex realities and ambiguities of contemporary District Six.

————

Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

————

The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.

During the defense, Hoa Mai Trần will present and academically defend the findings of her dissertation before the examination committee. The title of her dissertation is: “The Virtual Self in the In-Between: An Ethnographic Study of Childhood and Children’s Modes of Existence in Digital Play.”

Where does “the child” begin in digital play, and where does it end? Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork with three families in Germany, Hoa Mai Trần examines children’s experiences while playing digital games. The educational science study explores how the boundaries between the “self” and the “not-self” shift during play. At its core is the research question: How is children’s hybrid being-in-the-world brought forth through digital play?

The central thesis of the dissertation is that children can be present and exist beyond the physical boundaries of their flesh-and-blood bodies. Between feeling, becoming, and dying, an in-between space unfolds within play, revealing children’s hybrid, living modes of existence. Children’s play becomes a meaningful, tangible, and dynamic (in-between) reality. The phenomena of boundary dissolution, mutually generated by the child and the game, enable temporary or reactivatable ways of unfolding the self and the world, depending on the particular play situation, and contribute to the emergence of the virtual self. The virtual self is not a digital representation of the child within the game, but rather the idea brought forth through play—one that can be digitally materialized and personalized to varying degrees, expressing the possibility of being or becoming something or someone. Digital games are inhabitable spaces of childhood that have individual, social, educational policy-related, and economic significance for children and society.

The dissertation project is part of Subproject B05: “(Early) Childhood and Smartphones.” The examination will be conducted in German and will be chaired by Prof. Dr. Jutta Wiesemann (first examiner), Prof. Dr. Jochen Lange (second examiner), and Prof. Dr. Chantal Munsch (member of the examination committee).

Anthropology. Activism. Power. Celebrating 10 years of boasblogs

Conference at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry on October 16, 2026

Keynote by Prof. Dr. Shalini Randeria (U Bremen Excellence Chair Worlds of Contradiction): A Politics of Hope against Soft Authoritarianism

To attend in person, please register here.

Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

Prof. Dr. Alice von Bieberstein (Berlin): Sehnsucht und Berührungsängste: Westarmenien für die Nachfahren der Überlebenden des armenischen Völkermords

Genocidal violence is earth-shattering and world-destroying. The region we now refer to primarily as Eastern Turkey—which is also known as Northern Kurdistan—was, until 1915, part of the historical homeland of the Armenians. During World War I, approximately 1.5 million of them were expelled and murdered. Survivors in the region were either forcibly assimilated or, over time, emigrated to the major cities of Western Turkey and later abroad. For many decades, the eastern regions of Turkey lay beyond the reach of the survivors; only in recent decades has a tentative form of pilgrimage tourism begun to emerge. The lecture discusses genocidal violence as a radical force of separation and describes the impact this has on the sensory and physical encounter of the descendants living in the diaspora with the land of their ancestors.

————

Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

————

The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.

The oral examination begins with a presentation by the doctoral candidate lasting approximately 20 to 25 minutes and is followed by a discussion lasting at least 60 minutes. Only the members of the examination committee are permitted to ask questions. The examination is held in camera.

Aula is now live for the SFB. This first session walks through how to structure and manage your research data on the platform, setting up your subproject space, connecting Sciebo, describing datasets, and finding the guidance you need without leaving the platform. Bring your own data situation we will work through real cases rather than a demo dataset.

The workshop ist for all CRC members.

Here is the event link: https://umfragen.uni-siegen.de/index.php/341426?lang=en

Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

Dr. Simone Pfeifer (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt): Wer wird gehört? Postdigitale Erinnerung nach rechter Gewalt in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft

How do we commemorate racist violence, and who decides which stories are heard?
Memory has become a contested social arena that determines whose experiences matter in the public sphere, who is heard, who is allowed to speak, which experiences are acknowledged, and what future remains conceivable for a democratic society.
The lecture takes as its starting point the attacks in Hanau (2020) and Christchurch (2019) and examines how various civil society and municipal actors are responding to the profound turning point marked by right-wing, and in particular racist, violence. Right-wing violence never affects only individual people. It damages social relationships, shatters notions of belonging, alters perceptions of urban spaces, and leaves its mark on the media and political spheres. Using the examples of the racist and anti-Muslim racist attacks in Hanau (2020) and Christchurch (2019), this presentation will examine the forms of remembrance that emerge after such acts of violence, as well as where and how remembrance takes place in the post-digital and post-migrant space. Which voices become visible and audible, and where do conflicts arise over the interpretation and shaping of memory? How can we navigate these contested memories to build a shared future?

————

Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

————

The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.

Sensing Loss – Uni Köln goes r e t u r n: 60 Minutes AnthroLab.

Donnerstags 16:30-17:30Uhr 

PD Dr. Omar Kasmani (Freie Universität, Berlin): After Love. On Loss, Home and Other Heartbreak

After Love is a rumination on loss and a lament over home. Composed over a period of ten years, it is a durational account of migrant feeling, queer belonging and political heartbreak in the German capital. What transpires when home breaks our heart, or a place turns on us like a beloved in betrayal? What does it take for us to keep loving as our relations wither or warp? Or, how might we continue in love when ecologies and infrastructures of affect that are necessary for love’s work, work against bonding? By co-thinking philosophies of love, notions of exile and the figure of the city, I’m interested in tracing how erotic desire and intimate disturbance map on to political upheavals in Berlin; why urban matters are also matters of the heart.

————

Die Diskussionsreihe Sensing Loss bringt ethnologische Forschungen aus der Universität ins Museum. Sozial- und Kulturanthropolog:innen aller Karrierestufen berichten aus ihren aktuellen Forschungen, wie Menschen Verlust erfahren und Verlusterfahrungen bearbeiten. Sensing Loss fragt, wie Verlust begegnet, verkörpert und verräumlicht wird – und wie aus Vertreibung, Enteignung und vergangenem Unrecht neue Zukünfte gewonnen werden können. Erfahrungen des Verlusts (loss), ihre Konfrontation und Aufarbeitung [r e t u r n] sind dabei so vielfältig wie die Situationen, in denen Menschen Kolonialismus, Marginalisierung oder Gewalt begegnen. Die öffentlichen Vorträge diskutieren Formen des Sensing, über die Menschen Verlust gewahr werden, und Sense Making, d.h. die Frage, wie Menschen Verlusterfahrungen eine Bedeutung verleihen. Trauer, Verlust und Erinnerung können zur Quelle werden, Ansprüche an die Gegenwart zu artikulieren und zwischen Menschen und Orten, Vergangenheit und Zukunft neue Verbindungen zu erarbeiten. Im Sinne der Ausstellung r e t u r n  beschäftigen sich die Vorträge mit ganz unterschiedlichen Momenten und Formen der Trauer, der Nostalgie, der Erinnerungsarbeit und des gemeinsamen Aufbruchs. 

————

The lecture series Sensing Loss connects anthropological thinking across university and museum spaces. Social and cultural anthropologists at all career stages discuss their ongoing research to explore how people sense and make sense of loss. Sensing Loss asks how loss is experienced, embodied and spatialized – and how displacement, dispossession and past injustices can become sources for new future-making practices. Experiences of loss, their confrontation, and the ways in which people try to come to terms with them – and find ways to r e t u r n – are as diverse as the situations in which people experience colonialism, violence or marginalization.

The public lectures discuss how grief, loss and remembrance can become resources for articulating claims on the present, and for shaping new connections between people and places, past and future. In resonance with the exhibition r e t u r n at the RJM, the lectures engage with diverse moments and forms of grief, nostalgia and memory work, as well as with joint departures into new futures.

The conference, entitled ‘Language Connects: Cooperative Communicative Practices in Media Societies’, focuses on all types of linguistic and communicative media practices (in the broadest sense) through which actors, acting (more or less) in accordance with the situation, work towards facilitating cooperation and/or sustainably promoting cohesion, or counteracting the production of categories of social difference.

A conference itself also constitutes a cooperative communicative practice sui generis. This becomes particularly evident when it is not merely an academic conference. This conference is being held to mark the 60th birthday of Prof. Dr Stephan Habscheid, and the organising team is delighted to be able to engage in in-depth discussions with the speakers and all conference participants on specific and, in our view, highly relevant aspects of cooperative communicative practices.

To aid planning, the organising team would ask that you send an informal registration to Jan Gerwinski (gerwinski[at]germanistik.uni-siegen.de) by 15 September 2026.