Emptiness project collaboration with MLU Halle-Wittenberg

We are delighted to announce that DPhil student Friederike Pank will be affiliated with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies (ZIRS) at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg for the duration of her fieldwork year in Eastern Germany.

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies serves as a platform to inspire exchange and collaboration among researchers across regions and disciplines. Its growing community consists of established and early-career scholars from more than 15 scientific disciplines who work, among others, in the fields of energy and resources, post-extractivist futures, structural transformation, and human-environment relations.

ZIRS organises talks, workshops, and academies at the intersection of Environmental and Energy and Area Studies. In summer 2021, the Centre hosted its first summer school, dedicated to the theme Post-Carbon Futures: Cities, Industries, and Energies in Central Europe, in collaboration with the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Institute for Structural Transformation and Sustainability at MLU, as well as Durham University, the European Humanities University Vilnius, and the CityIndustries Research Network. The summer school featured excursions, lectures, and debates around the themes of energy transition and the changing temporalities and spatialities of industrial landscapes. See here for a reflection on the summer school in relation to the Emptiness project.