From July 25 to 27, the mid-term conference “Contesting Place – Practices of (Un)Doing” took place in Eichstätt, preceded by a guided tour through the city as a pre-conference activity. The conference focused on the conflictuality of place by exploring how places are de-stabilised, dis-located, and de-identified. A central guiding question was: How are places […]
Text by Feliciana Chiaradia As an expat from Calabria, Italy, I have experienced throughout my life abroad what it means to be away from the things I loved about the place I came from: my family, friends, the mountains rising above the sea… yet less people ever asked me about that. The most common question, […]
We are delighted to share that our postdoc, Sarah Earnshaw, has published her first monograph. “Human Rights and Sovereign Standards in US Security: Freedom Will Be Defended” is now available from Routledge as part of the Advances in American History series. The age of human rights ushered in by the establishment of the post-WWII liberal international […]
Hello from my temporary, but very sunny desk in Eichstätt! My name is Rumya Putcha. I am an associate professor at the University of Georgia in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Currently, I am in residence at KU with the Practicing Place research group as a Mercator fellow. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time […]
We are thrilled to share the news that our research training group has been approved for a second funding period by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Practicing Place was established in 2021 and will be extended until the 31st of March 2030. There are many thanks owed to everyone who helped us through the review […]
We are now accepting applications for Associated Fellows as we enter the second funding phase of our Research Training Group (RTG) Practicing Place. We invite doctoral researchers whose work aligns with the themes of our RTG to apply. Your application should clearly articulate how your research contributes to developing the central perspective of Practicing Place. […]
On May 14th, 2025, our RTG had the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer (Univ. of Graz) to Eichstätt. Known for her work in American (literary) age studies (especially the intersection of age and gender), Roberta Maierhofer gave a talk on Agnès Varda and JR’s 2017 documentary Visages Villages. In “Faces, Places, and Moments […]
It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of our colleague and friend, Michael F. Zimmermann, who died on April 9, 2025. Michael was a founding member of “Practicing Place” and an integral part of our team. He was a wonderful colleague with great enthusiasm for research, always ready to […]
We are thrilled to announce that our book, Practicing and Placing Imaginaries: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Conceptual Ideas, and Case Studies is now available. On transcript’s homepage you can download the PDF or get the printed volume. The contributors to this volume explore the intertwined relationship of imagining and practicing from different fields of study (sociology, philosophy, […]
The dominance of oil as an energy source persists because of how the substance has been and continues to be culturally imagined. In September last year I visited the U.S. state most associated with oil production, and ‘energy capital of the world’, Houston, Texas, to explore how a ruling imaginary of oil has materialised through […]