Knowledge, Spaces, and Media

The research focus "Wissen. Räume. Medien." ("Knowledge, Spaces, and Media") has been reconstituted in 2017 in order to create a common basis for the research of history of knowledge and science (especially in connection with the Gotha Research Centre), historical-cultural space research and media-related research. The diversity of the projects as well as the overall collaborations have long shown that this research focus is an attractive field, which is capable of developing even further. Together with the Gotha Collection and Research Network, the mutual constitution processes of knowledge, spaces and media are being investigated at the University of Erfurt. Each of these three perspectives bringing up common questions. For example: How is knowledge constituted, ordered and historicised in practices, media and objects? How is knowledge spatialized (in archives, collections, exhibitions), and how are spaces produced through practices, knowledge and media? How do media contribute to the production, storage, mediation and transformation of knowledge? To what extent do media constitute spaces? Thus the result of this specific research focus is a distinct form of cultural studies at the University of Erfurt, which also integrates approaches of social science and – as practiced for example in the research group "Religion and Urbanity: Mutual Formations" – religious studies.

Projects of the research focus (German only)