News

How does the war in Ukraine affect research?
What are the consequences of migration linked to the war?

Last week we had guests from Ukraine from the University of Lviv to talk about the consequences of the war in Ukraine and its effects.
After some greetings by Prof. Kinder and the Dean Volodymyr Bilanyuk of the Faculty of Geography at the University of Lviv, we started with a panel on the integration of the transport system of the Lviv region into the European transport system under conditions of forced population migration. In addition to mobility, a number of other panels dealt with migration processes as a factor in post-war development, re-migration and the adaptation of internally displaced persons, as well as the organisation of educational opportunities and the socio-geographical characteristics of Ukrainian emigration.
Between the individual panels, there were numerous opportunities for personal exchange and further exploration of individual topics.
As a chair, we have already been cooperating with our friends from Lviv for many years, which is why it was also important and at the same time a very instructive opportunity for us to be able to exchange ideas in person under such difficult conditions due to the war, to gain an understanding of the situation of our friends in Ukraine and to discuss further projects.

Already in July, Prof. Kinder emphasised during his visit to Lviv: "Be assured that we stand firmly by your side in the fight for your freedom. You defend our common Europe, in which we want to live together in peace & freedom." This remains true!

Next Friday, Prof. Sebastian Kinder and Paul Wohlfahrt will be guests at the Gesellschaft für Erd- und Völkerkunde Stuttgart and will present results from our research project Migration and Transnational Interconnections of the German Mennonites from Central Asia. They will go into the history and beliefs of the Mennonites, trace their path to Central Asia and report on their experiences during research on site in the German colonist village RotFront.

The event starts on Friday, 20.10. at 18:30 in the Lindenmuseum.

You can find all information about the event here (in german)

We look forward to seeing you there!

On Friday and Saturday (6/23-24), the Chair of Economic Geography had the honor of hosting the workshop of the Arbeitskreis für Historische Kulturlandschaftsforschung in Mitteleuropa e.V. (ARKUM). This unique meeting format brought together young scholars from the fields of geography, archaeology, and history to discuss current issues in historical cultural landscape research. The focus was on intensive discussions about conceptual, methodological and methodological perspectives of research.

The goal of this unconventional approach was to promote collegial exchange and to focus on the further development of interdisciplinary perspectives. During the workshop, classical lectures were deliberately avoided in order to create space for intensive dialogue.

Participants in the discussion included the chairman of ARKUM, Prof. Dr. Matthias Hardt (GWZO, Leipzig), and board member Dr. Patrick Reitinger (IfL, Leipzig). David Fuchs from the Chair of Economic Geography was also represented as a participant. In addition, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kinder contributed a greeting that underlined the importance of this workshop.

The event was a great success and contributed significantly to the promotion of scientific exchange and interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of historical cultural landscape research and will be continued in the future.

During an excursion of the circle of friends of the "Prof. Dr. Frithjof Voss Stiftung - Stiftung für Geographie" to Silesia, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kinder had the honor to give the participants a guided tour in Wroclaw and to introduce them to the history and urban development of the Silesian metropolis from a geographical perspective.

The Voss Foundation was established in December 2000 with the aim of promoting geography in science and research and as a school subject, and thus at the same time strengthening its applied significance in the public eye. The foundation awards two science prizes (physical geography and human geography) and a prize for school geography every two years during the German Congress of Geography, as well as the International Science Prize of German Geography every four years. The prizes all have a high reputation and are among the most important prizes in geography in the German-speaking world.

Since 2007, the Circle of Friends has supported the Foundation in its work.

What are the challenges posed by war-related migration from eastern Ukraine to the west of the country?

This question is currently being investigated by the Department of Economic Geography in Tübingen in cooperation with the University of Lviv under research conditions made more difficult by the war. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kinder and Prof. Dr. Iryna Hudzeliak report on the effects of the war in Ukraine on research there in the current issue of Geographische Rundschau (issue 5-2023).

On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of geography at the University of Lviv, Prof. Dr. Kinder was a guest at the 3-day anniversary conference "Geographical Education and Science: Challenges and Progress" in Lviv (Lemberg). The event had a special character due to the war. Especially the absence of many members of the Faculty of Geography who are currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces or have already died in the war, painfully revealed the gap that the war tears in life and research. Next to it, even the repeated nightly air alerts seem beside the point.

The omnipresence of war in today's Ukraine was also reflected in the address of Decan Volodymyr Ivanovych. He stressed that today's graduates, students and staff of the Faculty of Geography are professionals with a strong civic position, show courage and patriotism, and stand up for the freedom of Ukraine. This has become especially clear since 2014. In his speech, the current view of Ukrainians on the past years, which have profoundly shaped and changed society, became clear. "The Heavenly Hundred [This is the name given to the victims of the Maidan Revolution who died during the months of protests on the Kyiv Maidan in 2013 and 2014] managed to overcome the criminal regime, and to this day this path is very thorny, with tears and pain. The struggle was just the beginning. The heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, including the student of the Faculty of Geography Ihor Kostenko and graduates of other faculties of the University, strongly defended themselves, but unfortunately died in the war for the future of Ukraine," recalled Volodymyr Ivanovych.

The decan also mentioned the names of those who gave their lives in the war against the Russian aggressor for the freedom of Ukraine, "the freedom of spirit and choice, the opportunity to build Ukraine." The audience commemorated them with a minute of silence.

Professor Kinder spent five days in Lviv. In his greeting, he pointed out the trusting cooperation in research and teaching between geographers in Tübingen and Lviv that has grown in recent years. "Be assured that we stand firmly by your side in the struggle for your freedom. You defend our common Europe, in which we want to live together in peace and freedom." Despite the war, the Chair of Economic Geography in Tübingen and the Faculty of Geography in Lviv are also currently working closely together. Currently, both are working as project partners on the research project "Displaced persons in Ukraine: Challenges for municipalities and civil society". In this context, Prof. Kinder pointed out that the cooperation will be further intensified at the latest after the end of the war. For example, a German-Ukrainian research project on the emergence of transnational social spaces in the context of Ukrainian refugees is in preparation. And student and academic exchange is also to be further expanded within the framework of an Erasmus project.

Last year, four of our students were in Rot-Front, a place in Central Asia, with Professor Sebastian Kinder as part of a research project. Among other things, they investigated the migration history of German Mennonites in Kyrgyzstan.
The students have now published their initial findings from the on-site research in the Global Studies Working Papers.
This paper provides an overview of the migration of the Mennonite community from northern Germany, or what is now the Netherlands, from 1530 to the point where the village of Rot-Front in the Kyrgyz Republic can still be found today. However, the main focus of the work is on the development of the German colonist village, the media portrayal as well as the past and present contacts of the Mennonite*s to the world. The research is based on a content analysis of different newspaper articles, interviews conducted by the authors on site, and a mapping of the village. The results suggest a few similarities, but also some serious differences in the media representation compared to the collected impressions of the researchers.

To the publication

Last year, Prof. Sebastian Kinder was on a major field trip to Korea with students. The report of a student research project has now been published in the Global Studies Working Papers.

The Samsung Group is the largest Korean chaebol, which also includes the construction company Samsung C&T Engineering Construction Group, to which Raemian belongs, among others (Andolfo 2018, p. 59). Given that there are strong linkages between the chaebols and South Korean politics, it seems logical that Samsung now appears not only as a company, but also as an active actor in shaping space. It can be assumed that the company is pursuing its own interests in this regard. For an investigation of this topic, the focus is on the area near Samsung's corporate headquarters, the so-called Samsung Town, in Seoul. What conclusions can be drawn about the state of this neighborhood with regard to Samsung's spatial design activities? This question is answered with the help of systematic observation. Neighborhood research serves as the theoretical basis, using neighborhood research and the concept of urban governance as an approach to the neighborhood. An overview of the theory used is given below, as well as the method used and the exact procedure. Subsequently, the empirical research results are presented and a discussion is introduced.

To the publication

Last Wednesday, Dr. Götz celebrated her farewell in the rooms of the AG Economic Geography.
Dr. Dagmar-Michaela Götz had been working at our institute since 2015 as a wiss. Staff member and study coordinator. During this time, she also managed our examination office professionally and reliably. She has always been a reliable contact person for the students and has relieved the lecturers of many administrative tasks.

Dr. Götz will retire at the beginning of 2023. The staff of the institute and the students thank Dr. Götz for her many years of work and her great commitment to the coordination of examinations and studies.
examination and study coordination. We will miss working with her.

P.S. Examination matters will be taken over by the Central Examination Office as of the new year.

For his master thesis "The Dishonor of Trianon: Maps and Caricatures in Hungary in the Service of Territorial Revision Efforts (1920-1938)" (2020) our master student Jeremy Wölbling received the Förderpreis für herausragende Masterarbeiten im Bereich der Südosteuropaforschung of the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft e. V..

We sincerely congratulate on this well-deserved award!

Our colleague Dorothee Apfel successfully passed the disputation today as part of her doctoral studies. As with her dissertation, her final oral examination was graded "magna cum laude", i.e. with the grade "very good".

Over the past three and a half years, Ms. Apfel has been working on "Multiple transitions to sustainable energy systems in Senegal" as part of a project funded by third parties. The research focused on the extent to which Senegalese SMEs can participate in the country's energy transition, what the potentials are and what the barriers are. Dorothee Apfel's research made clear that there are currently three competing energy development paths in Senegal, which can be characterized as path transplantation, indigenous path creation and path upgrading. There are very different potentials for SMEs in this context.

Dorothee Apfel graduated in geography from the University of Tübingen in 2009 and subsequently worked in research at GTZ, Prognos AG and Nürtingen-Geislingen University, among others. Since September, she has been a project collaborator on our BKM project on transnational linkages of German Mennonites in Central Asia.

We congratulate Dr. Dorothee Apfel on her successful doctorate and welcome her to our research group!

The Chair of Economic Geography in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Erd- und Völkerkunde zu Stuttgart e.V. (GEV) conducted a city tour on the topic "Traces of Colonialism in Tübingen".
On Saturday the 15.10.2022 a group of 11 participants under the guidance of our students Mrs. Gramsch and Mr. Moll visited different places in Tübingen which have historical connections with German colonialism. The route led from the Neue Aula to the Tropical Clinic and the Tropical Convalescent Home, the city cemetery, and on to the city center.
At each of the excursion points, different aspects of the colonial past of the city of Tübingen and its society were highlighted. In addition to the institutional contexts, important protagonists such as Eduard Haber, Gottfried Olpp, Paul Lechler and Professor Carl Uhlig were also introduced.

Ms. Gramsch and Mr. Moll, who led the tour, were participants in a teaching research seminar of the Chair of Economic Geography, which investigated colonial traces in the city and the university during the winter semester 2021/22.

The results of the seminar can be read in the booklet "Colonial Heritage in Tübingen - A Search for Traces", which was printed with the kind support of GEV.

The booklet can be purchased for a fee of 8 Euros at the chair (contact: kerstin.haid@uni-tuebingen.de).

Rot-Front (formerly Bergtal) is the last colony of German Mennonites in Central Asia, where descendants of the colonists who came from West Prussia still live today. In a research project funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, we are investigating the migration history of the German Mennonites in Kyrgyzstan and their transnational interconnections today.

As part of the project, four students will be conducting interviews with the residents of Rot-Front together with Prof. Kinder over the next few days. Today we first moved into our accommodation in a former colonist house and got a first overview of the village. In the process, we were able to make our first contacts.

In the lecture the different facets of current colonial traces in Tübingen will be highlighted. Until today there are places to discover in Tübingen, which establish a connection to the colonial past. Based on these different locations, the colonial entanglements of Tübingen society in the history of German colonialism will also be highlighted. The presented contents are the results of a student research project.

The Chair of Economic Geography is pleased to announce the approval of a research project within the DAAD funding program "East-West Dialogue". The project entitled "Landscapes of Remembrance in the Kaliningrad Region - Contested history and geographies of regional identity" will be managed and implemented in cooperation with the Baltic Federal Immanuel Kant University.

The project will provide an overview of the memory landscapes in the public space of the Kaliningrad Oblast. In addition, the underlying narratives will be elaborated on the example of selected memory landscapes and the memory sites and practices associated with them, and analyzed with regard to their intentions, the way they are implemented, and what they say about the current German-Russian relationship.

Two workshops and an eight-day study tour in selected locations in Kaliningrad will provide a basis for the research. In addition, the German and Russian project partners will have the opportunity to spend a three-month scholarship period in the other country. The findings of the research will be published in a final volume.