SMUS Berlin Visits 2022

On the occasion of academic international visitors through SMUS at TU Berlin, we are pleased to share with you a schedule of excursions and events taking place in the summer semester 2022. This schedule will be open to our international guests as well as students and academics from Berlin. Please find information on additional lectures and seminars that are happening in connection with the research visits, as well as more detailed information regarding the excursion itineraries and how to enroll for the excursions in the attached file:

Download the SMUS Berlin Visits Itinerary here.

Tuesday, 31.05.2022

09.00 – 19.00 Excursion: Pfaueninsel & Wannsee

Aristocratic & Bourgeois Berlin before/during Industrialization

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Tamar Sarkissian (tamar.sarkissian@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Sunday, 05.06.2022 – Excursion: Wittenberg (Pentecost)

10.00 – 22.30 Excursion: Wittenberg (Pentecost)

Leave together for excursion to Wittenberg is the starting point of the Christian Reformation. Martin Luther spent 35 years here – more than half of his life. It was here that he published his 95 theses against the sale of indulgences in 1517, and here you will find the first Lutheran Church world-wide. Pentecost will be a perfect time to visit, as this is one of the main holidays

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Mara Cosci (mara.cosci@tu-berlin.de)


Monday, 06.06.2022

12.00 – 19.00 Excursion: German Parliament, Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Town Center

Urban Reconstruction after WW II

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Vanessa Uloth (v.uloth@tu-berlin.de)


Sunday, 12.06.2022

11.00 – 19.00 Excursion: Mauerpark & Berlin Wall

Berlin during the Cold War

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Lena Kursch (lena.kursch@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Tuesday, 14.06.2022

09.00 – 19.00 Excursion: A historical walk through Berlin neighborhoods 1: Reformstädtebau & genossenschaftlichen Wohnungsbau der 1920/30er

The excursion will explore the relationship between architecture/urban design and society. In this context, we will also discuss what “urban infrastructure” is and what makes it sustainable. We will select different neighborhoods which were originally planned for different social strata but today are inhabited by varying social groups in order to see how urban design and social class are entwined. In addition, the walks will continue to specify the ethnographic method of “cultural crossreading” which we developed in the context of the so-called CRC 1265 “Harz Trip” in 2019 and which aims at decolonizing social science methodology.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Angela Million (angela.uttke@tu-berlin.de); Maria Norkus (maria.norkus@tu-berlin.de); Tilla Reuscher (t.reuscher@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Thursday, 16.06. – Friday, 17.06.2022

Conference “Production, Retailing and Consumption of Food. Commodity Chains before and after Covid-19”

Contact and Information: warenketten@mes.tu-berlin.de

Organizers: Nina Baur, Elmar Kulke, Linda Hering, Lara Espeter and Jakob Engel


Saturday, 18.06.2022

09.00 – 19.00 Excursion: Covid-19 in Poor Neighborhoods 1: Neukölln (SMUS Action 2)

A combination of a workshop an city walks will link SMUS Action 2 “Covid-19 in Poor Neighborhoods” (Gabriel Faimau, Elcid Li & Nina Baur) with the projects “Knowledge and Goods” (CRC 1265 A03) and “Apples and Flowers (both Nina Baur & Elmar Kulke). Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the project “Knowledge and Goods” used the example of buying and selling fresh produce to investigate the communicative actions of consumers belonging to different social milieus in four Berlin neighborhoods as well as those of retailers (so-called “intermediaries”) as actors in the commodity chain. We showed both how consumer-retailer-interaction is embedded into the built environment and how it mediates between places (shops, the home), territorial space (the neighborhood) and the space of pathways (commodity chains). Food suppliers also provide a firm infrastructure of neighborhoods and are located in relation to other types of infrastructure (such as other shops, schools, hospital, public administration or traffic nodes). In 2019, also explored advantages and challenges of the ethnographic method of “cultural crossreading” in several city walks. Based on this prior work, we will return to these neighborhoods in explore how they have changed after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Gabriel Faimau (Faimaug@UB.AC.BW); Elcid Li (elcidli@yahoo.com); Linda Hering (linda.hering@tu-berlin.de); Tilla Reuscher (t.reuscher@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Tuesday, 21.06.2022

09.00 – 19.00 Excursion: Covid-19 in Poor Neighborhoods 2: Marzahn (SMUS Action 2)

A combination of a workshop an city walks will link SMUS Action 2 “Covid-19 in Poor Neighborhoods” (Gabriel Faimau, Elcid Li & Nina Baur) with the projects “Knowledge and Goods” (CRC 1265 A03) and “Apples and Flowers (both Nina Baur & Elmar Kulke). Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the project “Knowledge and Goods” used the example of buying and selling fresh produce to investigate the communicative actions of consumers belonging to different social milieus in four Berlin neighborhoods as well as those of retailers (so-called “intermediaries”) as actors in the commodity chain. We showed both how consumer-retailer-interaction is embedded into the built environment and how it mediates between places (shops, the home), territorial space (the neighborhood) and the space of pathways (commodity chains). Food suppliers also provide a firm infrastructure of neighborhoods and are located in relation to other types of infrastructure (such as other shops, schools, hospital, public administration or traffic nodes). In 2019, also explored advantages and challenges of the ethnographic method of “cultural crossreading” in several city walks. Based on this prior work, we will return to these neighborhoods in explore how they have changed after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Gabriel Faimau (Faimaug@UB.AC.BW); Elcid Li (elcidli@yahoo.com); Linda Hering (linda.hering@tu-berlin.de); Tilla Reuscher (t.reuscher@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Thursday, 30.06.2022

Option 1: 07.45 – 17.00 Excursion: Lübbenau in Spreewald

Getting an impression what preindustrial Germany looked like.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Berkant Ufakcan (berkant.ufakcan@campus.tu-berlin.de)

Option 2: 11.00 – 18.00 Workshop: Sprache – Raum – Refiguration: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (in German)

Organizers: Hubert Knoblauch (hubert.knoblauch@tu-berlin.de); Silke Steets (silke.steets@fau.de)

11:00                  Ankommen / Kaffee und Snacks

11:30 – 12:00   Hubert Knoblauch (Berlin) & Silke Steets (Erlangen) (Soziologie): Sprache – Raum – Refiguration: Einleitende Überlegungen

12:00 – 12:45   Johannes Coughlan (Berlin, Soziologie)  Is there a place for language and is there a language for place in Studio Studies?

13:45 – 14:30   Heiko Hausendorf & Johanna Jud (Zürich, Germanistische Linguistik) Wenn das Hier und Jetzt fraglich wird: Über sprachliche Vergewisserungen von Kopräsenz in hybriden Settings

14:30 – 15:15   Anne Storch (Köln, Dekoloniale Linguistik/Afrikanistik) Die Rekonstruktion des Unsichtbaren

15:15 – 16:00   Nico Nassenstein (Frankfurt, Linguistische Anthropologie) Kategorisierung von Grenzgängern und ihren Sprachen in Uganda: Überlegungen zu Sprache, Raum, Territorialität

16:15 – 17:00   Kai Vöckler (Offenbach, Urban Design/Designwissenschaft) Produktsprache und Raum

17:00 – 17:45   Dagmar Pelger (Berlin, Architektur/Städtebau) Mappings als dichte Erzählungen

18.00 – 19.30 CRC Lecture: Peter Auer – Space and Place – Linguistic Perspectives


Sunday, 03.07.2022 – Excursion: Eisenach and Wartburg

09.15 – 22.30 Excursion

Leave together for excursion to Wartburg, a medieval town with a castle where Luther translated the bible and in doing so, created the German language, and where musician Johann Sebastian Bach lived.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Peter Fauth (p.fauth@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Tuesday, 05.07.2022

09.00 – 19.00 Excursion: A historical walk through Berlin neighborhoods 2: 1980s

The excursion will explore the relationship between architecture/urban design and society. In this context, we will also discuss what “urban infrastructure” is and what makes it sustainable. We will select different neighborhoods which were originally planned for different social strata but today are inhabited by varying social groups in order to see how urban design and social class are entwined. In addition, the walks will continue to specify the ethnographic method of “cultural crossreading” which we developed in the context of the so-called CRC 1265 “Harz Trip” in 2019 and which aims at decolonizing social science methodology.

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Angela Million (angela.uttke@tu-berlin.de); Maria Norkus (maria.norkus@tu-berlin.de); Tilla Reuscher (t.reuscher@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Thursday, 07.07.2022

07.30 – 15.00 Excursion: Sachsenhausen

Nazi Germany: Former Concentration Camp

Organizers: Nina Baur (nina.baur@tu-berlin.de); Lilian Sanyang (lilian.sanyang@campus.tu-berlin.de)


Thursday 14.07. – Sunday 17.07.2022 Excursion: Language, Space & Society 2: Bamberg & Nürnberg

Catholic dome, medieval towns, National socialist sites. We will use this excursion to collect the material for the second workshop on language, space and society.