Georg-Simmel Center for Urban Studies

Georg-Simmel Center for Urban Studies


One of the key aims of the Georg-Simmel Center for Urban Studies is to foster an international network of academic departments and other institutes that are active in metropolitan researches. Currently, the Geography Department, the Institute of European Ethnology and the Institute of Sociology are the foundation of the Georg-Simmel Center. The center is also intended to refer to current issues of urban politics, planning and to contribute to these in multiple ways, for example, through the organization of academic events or publication of specialized papers.

 

News

 

Workshop: "Botanical Watercolour" with Mira O'Brien Sept/Oct/Nov (four Saturdays) 2024 in Berlin

 

This series of participatory workshops invites participants to explore human-plant relations through the lens of migrant home-making, using multimodal ethnographic research methods that combine art and social sciences. Led by artist Mira O’Brien, participants will learn watercolor painting techniques to observe and capture the world of plants, cultivating patience and attentiveness. The workshops aim to create a space for shared learning, where participants, especially those with migration histories, can explore how plants contribute to home-making and the creation of shared worlds.
 
 
Limited to 15 participants. Participation is free.
Registration via this link.
 

Urban Theory Symposium: „Sensing DiverCities” Nov 14-15, 2024 at GSZ
 
The symposium poster can be found here.
 
Cities are places full of sensory stimuli, yet sensory experiences beyond the visual, such as sound, smell or taste have largely been ignored in scholarly works on urban diversity and urban inequality. Our symposium wants to contribute to giving more attention to how the sensory mediates people’s engagement with the city and urban diversity, based on three themes: (1) The senses and their relation to the material and atmospheric figuration of cities, (2) the role of sensory practices and experiences for boundary drawings (and crossing) between different groups of urban actors, and (3) the purchase and challenges of sensory methods, including questions of knowledge transfer.
 

CfA RTG ‘Urban future-making’: 12 positions as research associate (m/f/d) - Research Training Group Doctorate

The Research Training Group ‘Urban future-making: Professional agency across time and scale’, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), deals with the scope for action of professional practice in shaping the built environment in the face of currently pressing challenges.

Application deadline: 22 October 2024

More information here.
 

Workshop-Report
 
Report on the workshop "Urban Metabolism: The Potential of Urban Political Ecology for Critical Geographies" published here.
 

Georg Simmel Days 2024 
 
The 11th Interdisciplinary Student Conference of the Georg Simmel Centre for Urban Research took place on 15th and 16th February 2024. Impressions and a summary of the event here.

 


New episodes of the Urban Political Podcast online

Episode 78 - Book Review: Waste and the City

Find this Episode here.

 

Episode 77 – Post-Socialist Infrastructure
Find this Episode here.
 

Transcripts for the Urban Political Podcast are available now
We are proud to announce that transcripts for episodes 58-65 of the Urban Political Podcast have been finalized and are now online at https://urbanpolitical.online/
 

Tarde, a handbook of minimal and irrelevant urban entanglements 

Tarde, https://www.tarde.info, is a bimonthly, and printed publication independently produced by GSZ researcher Santiago Orrego, supported by the Georg-Simmel Center, and initially distributed around Berlin. Its scope is to delve into those often taken-for-granted elements and associations happening in the streets.

The first number of Tarde, Glitch infrastructures, will be available around the Center, the Free University of Berlin, and the Technical University of Berlin from 11.09 while fanzines last.

 


CfA: “Questioning Urban Future-Making in the Times of Disrupture” Workshop is open until September 30.
The thematic Workshop takes place from December 5.–7. 2023 and is organised by the Urban Futures at Risk research group as part of the Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt University Berlin. Please click here for the call and further informations.
 

Urban sociologist on New Year's Eve: "No surprise that it's banging now".

Talja Blokland talks about the New Year's Eve incidents in Berlin in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung. Click here for the interview.
 

UrbanOpen: Digital database for outstanding theses in the field of urban research online!
 
Our digital database for theses UrbanOpen has recently gone online. Outstanding theses in the field of urban research written at the GSZ's supporting institutes are published there.
The collection is primarily aimed at students who would like to be inspired about topics, questions and methods in the context of their own final thesis.
The database was created as part of a GSZ project funded by the HU Academic Senate's programme for digital media in research, teaching and studies.
UrbanOpen can be found under the following link.


Interview by the rbb with Prof. Dr Talja Blokland on the pandemics consequences on Berlin and its inhabitants

Where many people live close together, the virus spreads particularly quickly, they say. The rbb asked: What is it like to live under these conditions in a Neukölln social housing neighborhood? Urban sociologist Talja Blokland says: We should definitely not get used to empty streets.
The interview can be heard here.

 


Scientific Advisory Board

The Council of the GSZ has decided to establish a scientific advisory board, which is responsible for our Centre in the near future. 

 


GSZ goes Twitter
The Georg-Simmel-Center is now on Twitter! Visit our new account and follow to always stay up to date with our work.

 


Urban sociological voices on the Corona crisis
In an interview for the Berliner Zeitung ("Großsiedlungen: Hier treffen Ausgangsbeschränkungen die  Berliners besonders hart") and in the Urban Political Podcast ("Inequalities of the Lockdown"), Prof. Dr. Talja Blokland spoke about the effects of the Corona crisis in the city. 

Events

 

Think and Drink Series

In cooperation with the Department of Urban and Regional Sociology, our Think and Drink Colloquium takes place every semester, where national and international scholars speak on various topics of urban research.

More information about this semester's speakers under the following link: Think & Drink Colloquium


Institute Colloquium European Ethnology

Every Tuesday, members of the department of European Ethnology present and discuss their current projects.

 

The current program can be found here.