Events

'House of Memory' – Raum für Forschung und Praxis im Kontext postmigrantischer und postkolonialer Erinnerungsarbeit

10/10/2025, Essen

The workshop explores different forms of archiving and documentation, aiming to connect initiatives and stories of transnational post-migrant and postcolonial cultural memory. The working group seeks to build structures in which new, digital perspectives on collecting, remembering and curatorial work can emerge.

Closed workshop in German

Editing Journal Literature: Possible Approaches and Aporias | Journalliteratur edieren

23/09/2025 - 24/09/2025, Essen

Literary texts published in journals are embedded in a medial continuum. They are often serialised and participate in a pluralistic form of authorship characteristic of journalistic practices. This workshop initiates a discussion between journal literature research and editorial philology – with a focus on 19th-century literature, for which first publication in newspapers or magazines was almost…

Pronouns and Action Formation / Ascription in Interaction: A Usage-Based Approach

11/09/2025 - 12/09/2025, Essen

Organisers: Jens Lanwer, Nathalie Bauer, Felix Bergmann, Karola Pitsch (University of Duisburg-Essen)

International Workshop of Embodied Interaction & Embodied Intelligence [EI]^2

21/08/2025 - 22/08/2025, Essen

Organisers: Karola Pitsch (University of Duisburg-Essen), Akiko Yamazaki (Tokyo University of Technology), Keiichi Yamazaki (Saitama University)

Methodological Complexities in Cross-Cultural Life-Course Research

14/07/2025, Essen | online

How do temporality, gender, class, and familial interdependencies shape life trajectories in Germany and Pakistan? In this workshop, scholars and students will discuss theoretical and empirical challenges in research on youth transitions, delayed adulthood, and evolving family forms from a cross-cultural perspective.

Ageing Materialities: Perspectives, Praxis and Possibilities

04/07/2025, Essen | hybrid

This workshop explores ageing as an interactional process and discusses the material and discursive practices that shape mid-to-later life. How do new technologies and digitalisation affect cultural conceptions of life course, later life and agency? This and related questions will be illuminated from different perspectives at the intersection of ageing studies and science and technology studies.

New Perspectives in Economics, Education and Social Sciences

03/07/2025, Essen | partly hybrid

This workshop will bring together renowned scholars to explore transformative ideas across economics, education, and interdisciplinary social sciences. Topics include the history of economic thought, socio-economic disparities in childcare enrolment, legal institutionalism, institutional reforms and gender, and the role of neoclassical economics in education.

Therapeutic Encounters with Chatbots: The Social and Ethical Implications of Artificial Therapeutic Agents

01/07/2025, Essen | hybrid

This symposium will focus on chatbots in talk therapy. Developers, sociologists and philosophers will discuss the sociotechnical imaginaries, design assumptions and challenges that guide the creation of these chatbots. How can communication between humans and chatbots be designed to promote mental health and well-being?

The EU-Central-Asia Relations: Dynamics and Perspectives

25/06/2025, Essen | hybrid

This workshop will critically and comparatively examine the European Union’s and Central Asia’s bilateral and multilateral relations. Contributors will discuss regional and cross-regional challenges, interregional interdependence and connectivity, as well as soft and smart power issues.

Queer AΦ Europe | Queer Analytic Philosophy: Social Concepts and Categories

16/06/2025, Essen | hybrid

Analytic philosophy is able, at its best, to untangle large and seemingly ineffable questions. Social ontology and conceptual engineering aim to analyse ordinary concepts and categories, such as gender, race, sexual orientation, identity, as well as social emotions. This conference presents work in analytic philosophy that focuses on the nature and properties of the social world.