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.
