Third-Party Funded Projects and Research Initiatives

Geography and Politics between North Africa and Europe. Ego-Documents as an Approach to a Relational History of Knowledge

The research project focuses on journeys from Europe to Northeast Africa before colonial land appropriation. It examines natural-scientific-geographical and political spatial knowledge based on selected texts produced during travels and explores different actors, forms, and contents of collaborative knowledge production, thereby investigating the genealogies of social and political spaces on-site. The project ... more

^{Image: © August Petermann, Draft of a map. East Africa between Chartúm & the Red Sea to Sauakin & Massua, 1:1,000,000, Gotha 1860/61, SPK 40.19.01 C (01), Perthes Collection of the Gotha Research Library}

Cooperation Project "Cultural Techniques of Collecting" (Erfurt-Gotha)

Collecting is undoubtedly one of the oldest cultural techniques, and it constitutes a fundamental practice in various forms in contemporary cultures as well. What is collected ranges between the poles of the necessary and the useless: food or firewood, bones of the deceased or empty sardine cans, collectible cards or plaster casts of ancient statues. Documents, manuscripts, quotes, information, or evidence are also collected, and, driven by digitization, data and metadata... more