Institute of Historical and Cultural Anthropology

Third Party Funded Research Projetcs at LUI

The Ludwig-Uhland-Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology (LUI) is an exceptionally well-funded research institution and home to numerous international and interdisciplinary research projects. These are characterised by ethnographic and cultural-historical approaches to topics of high social relevance. National and international partner institutions currently include Humboldt University Berlin, University of Freiburg, Bauhaus University Weimar, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), University College London (UK) and Jagiellonian University Krakow (Poland).

The interdisciplinary projects build bridges to ethnology, history, computer science, information science, communication studies, media studies and political science, among others. The projects also involve cooperation with numerous non-university partner institutions, especially museums, cultural heritage institutions and software development companies, and have an impact on society and public discourse through targeted science communication. Thematically, the projects focus on museum, collection and memory research, diversity research and digital anthropology, in line with the current focus of the LUI's three regular professorships. The field of digital anthropology is also institutionally anchored at the LUI through the work of the international Digital Anthropology Lab. These focal points are complemented by the thematically focused Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche, SFBs), the projects of the Centre for Language Studies (" Arbeitsstelle Sprache "), as well as teaching and research cooperations within the framework of the European university alliance CIVIS (see below).


Current Third Party Funded Research Projects at LUI

Hybrid Epistemic Practices: Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Academic Assemblages in the Qualitative Social Sciences and Humanities

Funding:       Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) und Wissenschaftsministerium Baden-Württemberg im Rahmen der Exzellenzstrategie von Bund und Ländern
Principal Investigator

Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither (Universität Tübingen LUI)

Co-Investigator Libuše Hannah Vepřek (Universität Tübingen LUI)
Project Researcher n.n.
Projektlaufzeit:

2024 - 2026 (36 months)

This project explores the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI's GPT models, within the qualitative social sciences and humanities at the University of Tübingen. From an ethnographic perspective, it seeks to understand how students and academic staff are becoming early adopters of generative AI, how this technology is being integrated into hybrid epistemic practices, and its broader impact in academic assemblages. The ultimate goal is to lay a foundation for the development of critical AI literacy in order to help students, researchers, and academic stakeholders make more informed decisions in the context of generative AI. 

More Information on "Hybrid Epistemic Practices"

Eine Geschichte des Anderen? Erinnerungen und Erinnerungspolitik auf beiden Seiten des Rheins an die „Reichsuniversität Straßburg“ (1941-2025) - CIERA Lehr- und Forschungsprogramm

Gefördert von CIERA Lehr- und Forschungsprogramm
Projektbeteiligte

Prof. Dr. Christian Bonah, Medizingeschichte, Strasbourg / Prof. Dr. Reinhard Johler, Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, Tübingen / Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Lang, Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, Tübingen

Leitung Prof. Dr. Jeanne Teboul
Projektlaufzeit:

2023 - 2025

Basierend auf einer multidisziplinären Kooperation (Ethnologie, Medizingeschichte, EKW) zwischen einer französischen (Université de Strasbourg) und einer deutschen Universität (Tübingen) hat dieses Projektvorhaben eine doppelte Perspektive: Zum einen trägt es zum Wissen über die Geschichte der „Reichsuniversität Straßburg“ und an die bis in die Gegenwart bedeutende Erinnerung an deren Wirken in Deutschland und Frankreich bei. Und zum anderen werden Masterstudierende und Doktorand*innen in einem mulitidisziplinären und multinationalen Forschungsprogramm in gemeinsamen Seminaren und workshops die Quellen und Materialien dieser bis in die Gegenwart reichenden Geschichte während zweier Jahre kritisch diskutieren.

Mehr zum Projekt "Eine Geschichte des Anderen?

Curating the Feed

Funding:      

DFG (DFG priority prgramme "The Digital Image")

PIs:

Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither (Universität Tübingen LUI), Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sabine Wirth (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), Prof. Dr. Benno Stein (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)

Duration:

2023 - 2026

The key goal of the DFG-funded interdisciplinary research project “Curating the Feed” is to gain a better understanding of digital image feeds and their curatorial assemblages. We ask how ever-evolving networks of digital practices, user interfaces, and algorithms co-curate image feeds on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Pinterest. How are digital image feeds designed? How are they embedded in user interfaces and complex media environments? How are they algorithmically controlled, especially through the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning? And how are they entangled with the everyday lives of countless social media users? 

More information on "Curating the feed"

From the Era of the Witness to Digital Remembrance

Funding:      

DFG (Förderlinie Nahostkooperation)

PIs: Prof. Dr. Thomas Thiemeyer, Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither (both LUI), Prof. Dr. Jackie Feldman, Dr. Becky Kook, Dr. Noam Tirosh (all Ben Gurion University of the Negev/ Israel)
Duration:

3/2023 - 2/2026

The DFG-funded research project "From the Era of the Witness to Digital Remembrance: New Media, Holocaust Sites and Changing Memory Practices" is an interdisciplinary and international collaboration between the  Ludwig Uhland Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen in Germany and the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Its core objective is to study the ongoing transformations of Holocaust commemoration in the digital generation. Our leading questions are twofold: How do digital media technologies generate new kinds of memory practice? And how do such practices of digital remembrance interact with more established memory practices that are anchored in places such as visits to concentration camps, museums and monuments? The ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach of the project provides a much-needed analysis of how established and emerging memory-practices juxtapose and entangle with one another.

More information  "From the Era of the Witness to Digital Remembrance"

 

Challenging Museums: Rethinking Institutional Norms and Practices

Duration 2022 - 2024
Funding European Union via CIVIS network (Hub 2: Society, Culture, Heritage) for the activities in 2022
PIs Dr. Judith Dehail (Aix-Marseille Université)
Prof. Dr. Marlen Mouliou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Prof. Dr. Thomas Thiemeyer (Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen)

For a long time, museum collections served the construction and legitimization of scientific disciplines such as anthropology, but also medicine, biology or history, without their constitution being really questioned. From the 1980s and 1990s, the emerging perspectives of the "New Museology" began to question collecting practices themselves. These questions necessarily led to others concerning the construction of scientific knowledge and collective memory. The practice of scientific collection (notably in the framework of ethnographic fieldwork in a “colonial situation") and its political role began to be questioned. The practice of selection of narratives operated by the exhibition became an object of study, as well as the conservation practices at work in museums, that began to be analyzed through the prism of the relationships between power and knowledge.

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Cross-Linking Cultural Knowledge: Cooperative Structures in Cultural Anthropology Research, Teaching and Knowledge Transfer

Funding institution: Volkswagen-Stiftung, Initiative „World Knowledge – Structural Support for Rare Subjects“
  in cooperation with the Landesmuseum Württemberg (Stuttgart), the Badisches Landesmuseum (Karlsruhe), the Landesstellen für Volkskunde (Stuttgart/Staufen), and the Zentrum für populäre Kultur und Musik (Freiburg)
PIs & Coordinators: Thomas Thiemeyer (Tübingen) and Markus Tauschek (Freiburg)
Karin Bürkert (Tübingen) and Matthias Möller (Freiburg)
Funding period: 07/2021-06/2028
Website: http://www.alltagskultur.info/kulturwissen

The collaborative endeavor Cross-linking Cultural Knowledge aims to create a sustainably effective, coherent knowledge landscape of Cultural Anthropology beyond institutional boundaries. It is a response to the institutional differentiation of folklore and cultural studies research in museums and universities, a differentiation that to the present day informs the small discipline of Folklore Studies (which since the 1960s has evolved into an empirical cultural science) and its precarious knowledge base. 

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Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe (CHAPTER)

Funding Institution

VolkswagenStiftung

Main Applicants and Principal Investigator

Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither, Prof. Dr. Sharon Macdonald

Principal Investigators

Prof. Dr. Haidy Geismar, Prof. Dr. Roma Sendyka

Project Researchers

Dr. Julia Leser, Helena Kieß, Alice Millar, Marlena Nikody, Pia Schramm

Funding Period

10/2020 – 02/2025

Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society (CHAPTER) is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Through ethnographic research and digital innovation, it develops approaches and best practice examples to support museums in challenging the growing influence of populist discourse in Europe. The project is a collaboration of researchers in Berlin (project leader:  Sharon Macdonald), Tübingen (project leader: Christoph Bareither), London (PI: Haidy Geismar), Krakow (PI: Roma Sendyka) and museums in the respective countries. The advisory board has members from six European countries. The project will also cooperate with software developer Fluxguide in Vienna, with whom the team will develop and co-design a museum app together with young visitors from three European countries. The project brings together a broad range of anthropological fields, including digital and media anthropology, museum anthropology, political anthropology and the anthropology of emotions/affects. Based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Ludwig Uhland Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen, together with the Jagiellonian University (JU) in Krakow and University College London (UCL), the project aims to develop a European perspective on how museums can challenge populist truth-making in contemporary digital societies.

More Information Projekt CHAPTER