College of Fellows

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

Interne Treffen 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 | New Horizons Lecture: Prof. Dr. Stephen Muecke: “Indigenous Australian Philosophy” (Alte Aula)

Weitere Informationen
Abstracts, Programm und Readings

8. Oktober 2026
Workshop on Urban Critical Zones

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

Do, 8. Oktober 2026 | 10:00 Uhr – 17:00 Uhr 
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin) | Common Room/hybrid 


Abstract: 

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’. 

Programme:

Session 1: 10:00-12:00: Introduction, Presentation Russ West-Pavlov: What are Urban Critical Zones?

  • READING: Latour & Weibel, ‘Seven Objections….’; Farías & Jensen: MS Introduction to Urban Critical Zones, to appear with Bergahn, 2027

Lunch break: 12:00-12:30

Session 2: 12:30-14:00 – Work groups with Stephen Muecke– 

  • READING: Latour, After the Lockdown, pp 78 ff. ‘Unfreezing the Landscape’

Coffee break: 14:30-15:00

Session 3: 15:30-16:00 – Kate Rigby (Uni Cologne, online) & Daniel Gallano (Uni Cologne). TBA 

Please follow this link to access the reading material.

13. Oktober 2026
Workshop on Isabelle Stengers "Making Sense in Proximity"

Workshop on Isabelle Stengers and “Making Sense in Proximity” 

Di, 13. Okt, 10:00 Uhr – 16:00 Uhr
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin) | Common Room 

Abstract:
Building upon Aöfred 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. 

Programme:

Session 1: 10:00-12:00: Introduction, Presentation Russ West-Pavlov: Isabelle Stengers and Proximity

  • READING: Texts: Stengers, Making Sense in Common, trans. T. Lamarre, U Minnesota P, 2023; Lamarre, ‘Translator’s Introduction: A Shock to Think Together’, in Stengers, vii-xvi.

Lunch break: 12:00-12:30

Session 2: 12:30-14:00 – Stephen Muecke, Working with Stengers 

  • READING: Texts: Muecke, ‘Illusion of Proximity’, Pt. 1 (Manuscript); Muecke, ‘Stengers’s Whitehead and Field Philosophy'

Coffee break: 14:30-15:00

Session 3: 15:30-16:00 – Applied Stengers, Applied Proximity – discussion

Please follow this link to access the reading material.

27. Oktober
Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities

Workshop on Transformations of the Humanities

Di, 27. Okt, 10:00 Uhr – 16:00 Uhr 
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.

Programme: 

Session 1: 10:00-12:00: Introduction, Presentations Russ West-Pavlov: The Proximate/Public Humanities

  • READING: West-Pavlov, ‘Deterritorializing the Humanities’ (Manuscript).

Lunch break: 12:00-12:30

Lunch break: 12:00-12:30

Session 2: 12:30-14:00 – Stephen Muecke, Experimental Humanities 

  • READING: Muecke, ‘An Ecology of Institutions: Recomposing the Humanities’; Muecke, ‘Illusion of Proximity’, Pt. 2 (Manuscript)

Coffee break: 14:30-15:00

Session 3: 15:30-16:00 – Stephen Muecke, group work: (1) Composing Our Humanities; (2) Re-Imagining the Humanities

Please follow this link to access the reading material.

29. Oktober 2026
New Horizons Lecture
Prof. Stephen Muecke: “Indigenous Australian Philosophy”

29. Oktober 2026 | 18.00 Uhr | Alte Aula, Münzgasse 30
(Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt.)


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.

Personen

Stephen Muecke
New Horizons
Kulturtheorie

Fellowship: New Horizons Fellowship
Affiliation (host institution, host scholar): College of Fellows (Center for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Studies), hosted by Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov
Stay in Tübingen (from – until): September 2026 – October 2026
Research Project: Cultures of Proximity; Indigenous Australian Philosophy
Research Areas: Urban Critical Zones; Making sense in Proximity; Transformations of the Humanities

Publications: 

  1. Stephen Muecke [Trans., forthcoming] Malcom Ferdinand, Loving the Earth: Undoing Colonial Inhabitation, Cambridge: Polity, 2026.
  2. Jennifer Eadie and Stephen Muecke, eds., Living in Critical Zones: Environmental Humanities in South Asia, Delhi: Routledge, 2025.
  3. Stephen Muecke [with Paddy Roe] The Children's Country: The Creation of a Goolarabooloo Future in North-West Australia, London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2020.
  4. Rita Felski and Stephen Muecke, eds., Latour and the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.
  5. Stephen Muecke [Trans.] Isabelle Stengers, Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, Cambridge: Polity, 2018.
  6. Stephen Muecke The Mother's Day Protest and other Fictocritical Essays, London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2016.
  7. Stephen Muecke Butcher Joe, Documenta 13: 100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken No. 054 English/German, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011.
  8. Stephen Muecke Ancient & Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy, University of NSW Press, September 2004, 197pp. Reprinted 2006.
  9. Stephen Muecke [with Adam Shoemaker] The Australian Aborigines; First Nations in an Ancient Continent, Thames & Hudson, 2004. 128pp. English translation of Les Aborigènes D'Australie, 2002.
  10. Stephen Muecke [ed. and intro. with Adam Shoemaker] Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines, David Unaipon, University of Melbourne Press at the Miegunyah Press, 2001.
  11. Stephen Muecke Textual Spaces: Aboriginality and Cultural Studies University of NSW Press, 1992, pp. 214. Second Edition, API Network, Curtin University of Technology, 2005, pp. 194.
  12. Stephen Muecke [ed. with Jack Davis, Mudrooroo Narogin and Adam Shoemaker] Paperbark: A Collection of Black Australian Writings, University of QLD Press, 1990.
  13. Stephen Muecke [with K. Benterrak and P. Roe] Reading the Country, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1984. 
Contact: s.mueckespam prevention@unsw.edu.au 
Activities at the College of Fellows: Workshop on “Urban Critical Zones” (October 8, 2026); Workshop on “Stengers: ‘Making sense in Proximity’” (October 13, 2026); Workshop on “Transformations of the Humanities” (October 27, 2026)
About: Stephen Muecke is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nulungu Research Institute of the University of Notre Dame Australia, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales. He is a cultural theorist and has worked at various Australian universities and been a visiting professor in Paris and Berlin. He has collaborated for many years with the Goolarabooloo people of the Kimberley region in Western Australia. An early result of that work was the prize-winning book Reading the Country: Introduction to Nomadology (1984), co-authored with Krim Benterrak and Paddy Roe, which explored the meaning and politics of place through Aboriginal narratives, songs and paintings. More recently, again with Paddy Roe, he published The Children's Country: Creation of a Goolarabooloo Future in North-West Australia (2021) and with Jennifer Eadie (eds., 2025) Living in Critical Zones: Environmental Humanities in South Asia. He is also a creative writer (No Road: Bitumen all the way was published in 1999) and has translated several books from French into English, notably Another Science is Possible (2018), by Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers, The Wandering Souls (2019), by French ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan; Our Grateful Dead: Stories of Those Left behind, (2021) by Belgian ethologist Vinciane Despret, and forthcoming, Malcom Ferdinand, Loving the Earth: Undoing Colonial Inhabitation, Cambridge: Polity, 2026.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov

Prof. Dr. Dorothee Kimmich

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Lejla Demiri

Prof. Dr. Astrid Franke

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer

PD Dr. Anya Heise-Von der Lippe

Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies