CRC 1265 – made simple

What is CRC 1265 ‘Re-Figuration of Spaces’?

The abbreviation ‘CRC’ stands for CollaborativeResearchCentre.
A Collaborative Research Centre is an association of researchers from different disciplines who all work on their own projects but at the same time under a common overarching theme (similar to the image on the right).

In our case, the overarching theme is ‘Re-Figuration of Spaces’ and the disciplines involved are sociology, architecture, planning, ethnology, geography, media studies and art. Since there are many different Collaborative Research Centres in Germany, they are numbered for clarity. Our CRC has the number 1265. CRCs receive their funding from the German Research Foundation, or DFG for short.

That’s how our CRC is organised, but what does ‘Re-Figuration of Spaces’ mean?

Our entire lives take place in different spaces: in flats and houses, villages and cities, schoolyards and on the street. We therefore often take spaces for granted. In reality, however, our relationship to spaces is constantly changing.

New technologies such as the Internet and social media enable people to connect with each other almost anytime, anywhere. New agreements and treaties between countries and companies are creating new trade and economic areas (globalisation). Wars and political conflicts are shifting the borders of nation states, cities and houses are being destroyed, and people are fleeing and trying to build new homes in safer countries.

At the CRC, we do not understand space as a natural backdrop for human activity. Instead, we understand spaces as something that is created through action and through the relationships between people and things. This does not always have to be a purely physical space; it can also be a virtual space, such as a chat room.

Our research always focuses on how certain spaces are created, how they change, and who can use them or who is excluded. We therefore examine the processes by which spaces are made and transformed, and we view conflicts as inevitable and necessary for social change.