New Horizons: Proximity in the Future Humanities

Das New Horizons Fellowship hat zum Ziel, Impulse in der Forschung an der Universität Tübingen zu setzen, internationale Kontakte zu vertiefen und Forschungshorizonte zu erweitern. New Horizons Fellowships werden vom College of Fellows pro Jahr zweimal universitätsweit und öffentlich ausgeschrieben. Aktuelle Ausschreibungen werden auf der Startseite des Colleges und in unserem Newsletter (Anmeldung hier) angekündigt.

Die Focus Group “Proximity in the Future Humanities” organisiert ihre Forschungsarbeit um die Forschungen von Prof. Stephen Muecke, der im September und Oktober 2026 als New Horizons Fellow zu Gast ist.

Forschungsthema der Focus Group

Professor Stephen Muecke (Nulungu Research Institute, Broome, Notre Dame University Australia) is visiting the university as a New Horizons Fellow for a 2-month stay at the College of Fellows from 1 September to 1 November 2026. The focus group includes 15 Professors and 2 postdocs from across four faculties (humanities, social sciences, law and theology) from political science, study of religions, Islamic and Catholic theology, anthropology/ethnology, cultural studies, Global South studies, philosophy and cultural theory, environmental humanities, and international law.
The main facets of Muecke’s research contains a core involvement with the theories and practices of proximity. Muecke’s work can contribute significantly to the focus group’s endeavour to mint ‘proximity’ as an emergent category of critical reflection in the humanities capable of resolving the aporias associated with the long-enshrined notions of ‘difference’ and ‘identity’, across a range of disciplines, for example those named above. Professor Muecke will be the inaugural fellow instigating the establishment of a Focus group on ‘Proximity in the Future Humanities.’ This Focus group builds on the work and the group of the ‘Critical Proximities’ initiative (2022-2025) and will continue the work of crafting and testing the potential and limits of a concept of ‘proximity’ in a series of workshop with Muecke. It aims to forge a paradigm shift within the humanities, from the identity/difference nexus to the more versatile and productive notion of proximity – and ultimately, to enhance the humanities’ contribution to modes of planetary co-existence in troubled times. Muecke’s past work and his ongoing research continues to embrace a practice of proximity to civil-society concerns (and projects) and a theorizing of that proximity. His presence in Tübingen is of enormous benefit to the work of the ‘Proximity in the Future Humanities’ Focus group and its further development, and to that of the university community as a whole.

Veranstaltungen

Informal meetings im September (College of Fellows)

8. Oktober: Workshop: Urban Critical Zones mit Prof. Dr. Stephen Muecke und Prof. Kate Rigby (College of Fellows)

13. Oktober: Workshop zu Prof. Isabelle Stengers: “Making sense in Proximity” (College of Fellows)

27. Oktober: Masterclass “Transformation of Humanities” mit PD Dr. Tim Lanzendörfer (Frankfurt/Main) (Alte Aula)

29. Oktober: Public Lecture: Prof. Dr. Stephen Muecke (Alte Aula)

Weitere Informationen und Abstracts

8. Oktober 2026 | Workshop on Urban Critical Zones

8. Oktober 2026
Workshop on Urban Critical Zones

Workshop on Urban Critical Zones, with Guest Prof. Kate Rigby (Köln), Respondent Prof. Evi Zemanek (Tübingen)

Thurs 8 Oct, 10:00-17:00

College of Fellows Common Room

The notion of urban critical zones promises to fill a gap both in critical zones studies (indexed by the absence till now of CZ observatories in cities) and in urban studies, which customarily place humans agents centre stage while relegating other actors to the status of ‘infrastructure’ and neglecting many other possible actants, thereby demanding an ‘ecologization’ of the discipline. More radically, however, the notion of urban critical zones demands that we revamp the very idea of the city as a bounded given (allowing it to be reconceptualized via the fluid, even ‘uncanny’ notion of the zone), thinking its manifold constitutive processes and flows in a non-linear fashion; and taking on board the types of agency and the repertoire of actants we understand as contributing to the dynamic process of ‘cityness’.

(3 sessions, interspersed with lunch (catered) and afternoon coffee break).

13 Oktober 2026 | Workshop on Stengers: “Making sense in Proximity”

13 Oktober 2026
Workshop on Stengers: “Making sense in Proximity”

Workshop on Stengers: “Making sense in Proximity”

Tues 13 Oct, 10:00-16:00

College of Fellows, Common Room

Building upon Whitehead’s concept of ‘coherence’ (no idea makes sense without being placed in relation with the other ideas that make up the whole) and Latour’s notion of ‘matters of concern’ (issues that provide an affirmative platform for thinking rather than mere ‘critique’), Stengers proposes a model of ‘making sense in common’ – in which our shared proximity to contemporary crises, even where our opinions may diverge radically, provides a framework for constructive – and vitally necessary – dialogue. The workshop explores what this may mean for our respective projects, whether conceptual, empirical, or activist.

(3 sessions, interspersed with lunch (catered) and afternoon coffee break).

27 Oktober | Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities

27 Oktober
Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities

Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities

Tuesday 27 Oct, 10:00-16:00

Alte Aula

Interventions by Stephen Muecke, Russ West-Pavlov, Tim Lanzendörfer, Mamadou Dramé/René Ramírez Gallegos (virtual), Anya Heise-von der Lippe

This workshop interrogates the public remit and the constitutive contours of the humanities from a number of points of view: as an assemblage in a universe of distributed agency; as a group of disciplines under pressure in an age of polycrises (from climate change to shifts in the graduate labour market); and as an institutional actant susceptible of transformation by developments originating in the Global South.

(3 sessions: 1: Muecke: Composition; Respondent Lanzendörfer (10-12); 2: Heise-von der Lippe, Applied Humanities; Respondent RWP (12:15-13:45); 3: humanities from the South: RWP) (14:15-16:00); interspersed by catering and coffee break)

29. Oktober 2026 | Public Lecture: “Indigenous Australian Philosophy”

29. Oktober 2026
Public Lecture: “Indigenous Australian Philosophy”

Thursday, 29. Oktober 2026, 18:00 Uhr (die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt)

Alte Aula