Blog

The process of writing and producing a movie plays out in an arena with diverging political agendas. From the production to the final outcome, films about irregular migration from West Africa are often distorted to fit certain narratives and agencies. Ata Messan Koffi, a Togolese researcher, film producer, and guest researcher at the CRC 1265, illustrates this dynamic by shedding light on his conflictual field of research.

By creating maps, researchers can gain insights into the social and cultural dimensions of urban, rural, hybrid, and mediated landscapes. Mapping can also be used to analyze historical changes, and to monitor ongoing changes and future developments. The objective of our workshop was to create space for transfer and exchange, especially about the interdisciplinary experience and body of knowledge produced in the first phase of the CRC. The different disciplinary backgrounds of the speakers demonstrate the transdisciplinary potential of mapping methods for the research of socio-spatial phenomena.

Eine Wiese in einem kleinen mecklenburgischen Dorf. Hier gibt es Enten, Gänse, Ornitholog:innen, Bienen, Schmetterlinge, Naturliebhaber:innen, Vogelnistkästen und einiges andere. Es klingt nach ländlicher Idylle. Carl-Jan Dihlmann und Ilse Helbrecht zeigen in ihrem Artikel „Ländliche Räume als relationale Gefüge. Argumente für eine ontologische Wende in der Ländlichkeitsforschung“ jedoch, dass bei genauerem Hinsehen ländliche Räume durchaus komplexer sind, als es der herkömmliche Fokus auf Naturnähe und Landwirtschaft nahelegt. Im Blogbeitrag stellt Carl-Jan Dihlmann das in der Geographischen Zeitschrift erschiene Paper vor und gibt Einblicke in die Entstehung eines wissenschaftlichen Fachartikels.

What is your favorite waterbody? What do you like about it? Chances are that you thought of a lake or a river, maybe even an entire ocean. For the collaborative workshop at the CRC 1265 on ‘water, flows, space, and other stuff’, Moritz Kasper and Afra Foli decided to use the notion of ‘waterbody’ to talk about slightly unorthodox containers of water: an urban river-turned-drain in Accra and bright yellow jerry cans in Nairobi.

The workshop „Space and Power from a Gender and Intersectional Perspective“ was part of the International Participatory Summer School on „Power and Space“, which took place from September 13th to […]

From August 2nd to 12th, a group of Kenyan and German students conducted the fieldwork of their study project in Nairobi, Kenya. The main goal was to explore the food system in the urban region of Kasarani, a constituency of Nairobi. Various methods, such as mapping and interviews, were used to gain insights into the food security status of the local people and the different factors that influence it.

This blog post is a field report of the author’s trip with the University of California Irvine’s EcoGovLab to the Salton Sea in California. Based on this field trip a few miles from Desert Hot Springs, near the San Andreas Fault, the article focuses on the non-human dimension in the figuration of spaces in the Anthropocene and the challenges posed by harmful entanglements that require alternative research approaches and close university-community relationships.

The authors of this blogpost are migration researchers. While doing research on the unequal distribution of mobility rights around the world, they make use of the privileges accorded to them by the very same regime. Their position has allowed them to travel to six countries within the last year. Inspired by stories from their past and current fieldwork, the authors reflect on their research within an unequal mobility and migration regime, which has become much more than a mere research object to them.