News and Events

At the invitation of the research initiative and core topic of the Centre of Cultural Inquiry, "Transforming Infrastructure: Cultural Perspectives", Elizabeth Freestone, theatre director and climate activist, will speak about her 2023 production of Shakespeare's The Tempest for the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of a seminar on "Resetting Shakespeare". Anyone interested is cordially invited!

For the past two years, the research initiative „Transforming Infrastructures. Cultural Perspectives” has engaged with the field of infrastructure research. The talk will give an overview on what has been achieved so far and discuss the prospects of this research initiative.

We are happy to announce to the edited collection "Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities" has been published and is now available for download!

It contributed to a whole new perception of nature and yet soon became an environmental problem: How automobility changed people’s relationship to the environment and how this is reflected in American road literature is the subject of the ERC project of literary scholar Timo Müller, professor of American studies at the University of Konstanz.

Whether infrastructure such as the supply of water is sustainable and how many people benefit from it depends on more than just technical factors. The decisive role cultural dimensions play in the context of infrastructure is one of the core topics that researchers at the Centre for Cultural Inquiry (ZKF) at the University of Konstanz are investigating.

The workshop is exploratory, interdisciplinary and academic. The participants (from culture, law and history studies) aim to survey and make accessible information on artefacts and human remains in Europe, create conceptual and normative bases of restitution and reparation for indigenous peoples since colonial times in South America. (Language: Spanish)

Picture: Mural by Lucas Quinto (Argentina)

The Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS) recently elected Timo Müller, professor of American studies at the University of Konstanz, as president. GAPS takes a critical look at European colonialism and its effects. A short interview with Timo Müller about postcolonial infrastructure.

In his talk “Collapsonaut’s Manual for Challenging our Intra-structures”, Dr. Jacopo Rasmi from the Université de Jean Monnet, Saint-Étienne will present some “collapsonaut” approaches that question and transform the current state of our risky intra-structural organization from within.

In the ZKF Public Talk “Anticipation by Redress: Transforming African Mega-Infrastructure Futures”, Kenny Cupers, Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Basel, will show how the promise of infrastructure-led development reactivates histories of displacement and forced resettlement.