Workshop on Urban Critical Zones, with Guest Prof. Kate Rigby (Köln)

Thurs 8 Oct, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin) | 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). 

Workshop on Isabelle Stengers: “Making Sense in Proximity” 

Tues 13 Oct, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin) | Common Room 

Building upon Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of ‘coherence’ (no idea makes sense without being placed in relation with the other ideas that make up the whole) and Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘matters of concern’ (issues that provide an affirmative platform for thinking rather than mere ‘critique’), Isabelle 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). 

Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities, with interventions by Stephen Muecke, Russ West-Pavlov, Tim Lanzendörfer, Mamadou Dramé/René Ramírez Gallegos (virtual), Anya Heise-von der Lippe

Tue 27 Oct, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Alte Aula (Münzgasse 30)  

Abstract: 
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 October 2026, 6:00 pm 
Alte Aula (Münzgasse 30)

Abstract: 
Indigenous Australian Philosophy is emerging as a field that translates some concepts and practices from Indigenous Australia to form a branch of Australian Philosophy, a field that is itself ephemeral. The forms of knowledge that have accumulated over many thousands of years on the continent have mostly been translated into the disciplines of anthropology, history, archaeology, linguistics and some sciences. The door to the philosophy department has, for the most part, remained closed. Young Indigenous scholars are finding ways to open the field up to the knowledge their ancestors bequeathed to them, articulating the concepts and practices found there with critical analysis, with ecological management, with totemism and animism, and with pragmatics. Articulating Indigenous Australian Philosophy in English, in writing, in seminar rooms, has its challenges. But there is no doubt something new will emerge that is relevant to the Australian, and perhaps more global, context.