Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Central

CENTRAL Workshops 2019 und 2020

Acht Projekte erhalten eine Förderung durch CENTRAL

Im Jahr 2019 werden acht verschiedene Projekte bei der Durchführung von mehrtätigen Workshops durch CENTRAL unterstützt.

 

Unterwelt.pngCommunicaton with the Underworld: From ancient Literature to Modern Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Projektleiterin Humboldt-Universität: PD Dr. Darja Sterbenc-Erker
Partner: Universität Wien, Universität Warschau
 

 

The workshops will focus on ancient Roman and Greek communications with the underworld, and the reception of the underworld across such a variety of case-studies as Renaissance Latin (Petrarca), modern Irish and Caribbean literature, and in modern children’s and young adult literature. The aim of the workshops is to investigate ancient texts which uncover conceptions, representations and ideas of the underworld in antiquity that profoundly influenced modern European literature and, in fact, the entire European world. The joint research group will explore those ideas which have shaped the roots of modern European culture to propose new interpretations of ancient literature around communications with the underworld.

 

 

Liturgical Prescription.jpg PixabayPatterns of Liturgical Prescriptions. Data-driven Comparisons
Projektleiter Humboldt-Universität: PD Dr. Tillmann Lohse
Partner: Universität Warschau, ELTE

 

 

 

Liturgical services in the Middle Ages must not be considered as restricted to a narrow interest of clerics, neither must they be treated as a special field of theological studies. On the contrary, in pre-modern Europe liturgy was present in almost all the aspects of the everyday life of both the clergy and the laymen. It was the means by which the highest percentage of intellectual and artistic achievements was communicated to the broadest audience and the most prestigious aim such achievements tended towards.
From the perspective of the formation of local, regional and institutional identities of pre-modern Europe, the variation of liturgical usages is of utmost significance and one of the most informative resources for mapping the patterns of such identities. Since earlier liturgical research concentrated on the archaic information, transmitted by sources composed before the first millennium, the traditions of the north-eastern parts of Latin Christendom were less frequented topics of scholarship. However, the practices of these neglected areas can only be interpreted in the widest possible context which demands a large-scale collection and analysis of evidence from all over Europe.
The arrangement of such an amount of information is facilitated by the upcoming approaches of digital humanities, especially database building and the encoding of texts. Therefore, the workshop aims to bring together four hitherto rather isolated fields of research: liturgical studies, manuscript studies, history of knowledge and digital humanities. The goal of the planned collaboration is to discuss how medieval norm texts can contribute to current issues of digital knowledge-management, with a special respect to liturgical traditions from Saxony, Poland and Hungary.

 

Relatives.jpgRelatives, interrogatives, and alternatives
Projektleiter Humboldt-Universität: Dr. Radek Simik
Partner: Universität Wien, Karls-Universität

 

 

 

The workshop aims to bring together senior and junior researchers dealing with one (or more) of the following research areas: the morphosyntax or semantics of relative clauses, wh-questions, and information structure. The central question of the workshop is why relative clauses are often identical to / derived from wh-questions (cf. Who came? and the man who came). Recent research has uncovered generalizations that suggest that the derivational relation from interrogatives to relatives is reflected in all areas of grammar and language development. No existing theory offers a satisfactory explanation of this problem. We therefore propose to convene a workshop devoted to further empirical investigations of the pertinent area as well as to the development of a new theory that would predict the observed recurrent linguistic pattern. The workshop will host experts and young scholars from Praha, Berlin, Vienna, and an invited speaker from Edinburgh. Building on a recently initiated collaboration, our aim is to strengthen the academic exchange between the universities involved and start developing a new international project that could support related work of young scholars.

 

 

 

Recht.pngLaw and Society in Times of Change: Theory and Praxis in Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Egypt
Projektleiter Humboldt-Universität: Dr. Lajos Berkes
Partner: University of Warsaw, ELTE

 

 

The aim of the workshop is to find new and innovative ways to discuss the impact of regime changes on the implementation of law in the transition from Greek to Roman, and from Roman to Islamic Egypt. To attain this goal we will transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and will draw on the experience of specialists of different fields such as legal history, classical philology, Papyrology, Egyptology and Ancient and Medieval history. We will focus on the times of change – administrative, governmental, and religious and how they affected the legal system. As a case study for the Eastern Mediterranean, we are going to focus on everyday documents from Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Egypt preserved on papyrus which provide unique glimpses into the everyday realities of legal practice.

 

 

Tracking Linguistics.jpgTracking down linguistic convergence. Contact languages in Eastern Central Europe
Projektleiter Humboldt-Universität: Dr. Uliana Yazhinova und Dr. Philipp Wasserscheidt
Partner: Karls-Universität, Universität Wien

 

 

Some languages resemble each other strongly or at least in some respects. They may share certain words that are only slightly distinct in their pronunciation, or they may apply the same strategies to form new words. Some also resemble each other with respect to grammatical patterns, e.g. the way they form their future tenses. Most of these similarities result from the close genetic relation of the respective languages, like in the case of the Romance or the Germanic languages. However, also genetically non-related but neighbouring languages may share these above-mentioned features. If this is the case for more than two languages in a certain geographical area, linguists trace these similarities to language contact and say that the languages have converged and thus form a linguistic area (Germ. Sprachbund). This is the case for the languages in Eastern Central Europe and amongst them especially Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and German (in Austria). So far, the research tradition has however not provided sufficient case studies to prove that the languages have become more similar through contact with each other. Additionally, it has neglected the probably most important aspect in language contact: the bilingual individual and their way of dealing with the languages and varieties in their repertoire in certain social settings. The planned workshops bring together scholars of several languages spoken in Eastern Central Europe as well as of Slavic languages, especially Russian as a heritage language. Their goal is to critically discuss and revise the idea of the Central European linguistic area. Therefore, they seek to integrate innovative theories and a mixed-methods approach to allow for the consideration of the bilingual individual and the sociolinguistic setting.

 

 

Maps.jpgMaps in Geography Textbooks
Projektleiter Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Dr. Dr. Péter Bagoly-Simó
Partner: ELTE, Karls-Universität

 

 

 

Maps shape our daily life in myriad ways. They not only serve as means of orientation, but also influence the way we perceive space (e.g. dangerous, beautiful, contaminated, friendly spaces). Over the last decades, use of digital maps has become the standard. School Geography–to our knowledge–still introduces maps using analogue textbooks. There is no solid empirical evidence regarding teachers’ educational media choice connected to maps. Similarly, little is known about the educational media students use to acquire map skills. The three universities involved in this proposal build on pervious work
carried out in three national settings covering different aspects of textbook usage in context of maps. Mixed methods, including surveys and eye-tracking studies will help answer the main research questions. The two CENTRAL workshops will help the stakeholders to get ‘on the same page’ (or in this case ‘on the same map’) while updating the theoretical and methodological knowledge. In doing so, junior researchers will play a key role in initiating empirical work and publish the preliminary results in joint papers. This preparatory works serves as a starting point for research grant submission with the EC.

 

 

DUMMY.jpgLanguage and Cultural Comparison
Projektleiterin Humboldt-Universität: Dr. Rita Hegedüs
Partner: Universität Warschau, ELTE, Karls-Universität, Universität Wien

 

 

 

In the pevious funding period a close and effective cooperation was developed between all CENTRAL partners. Teachers and doctoral students at the Hungarian departments
of the participating universities were envolved in the project. This cooperation is to be continued in two main directions:
A. Doing functional-typological work and promoting the metodology and theory of language teaching have already begun in the previous funding period. The goal is to create an expandable, multi-language online database built on a unified concept. Each chapter is a rich source for how a functional-discourse item operates in a language under concerned. Beyond the traditional components in language description the semantic-lexical and pragmatic aspects are also included. This is the way, how languages with different origin and typlogy will be accessible more easily, and the process of language learning, teaching and translation is facilitated and accelerated at the same time.
B. Exploring the cultural roots of the region, analyzing the connnections and interactions
between cultures, describing the reception of Hungarian culture in the different countries
offer a broader perspective to the students through lively and continuous scientific
debate . Specific topics in this field will be the reception of contemporary writers in the
different countries and the image of the countries in contemporary and older literature.
Comparing translations connects the literary and cultural aspect with the functional discourse manifestations in the language.

 

 

Queer.jpgQueer Theory and Literary Studies
Projektleiterin Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Dr. Eveline Kilian
Partner: Universität Warschau, Universität Wien

 

 

 

Queer theory has had a strong impact on the study of gender and sexuality since the 1990s. Its main focus is the deconstruction of the binary gender system and heteronormativity as well as a trenchant critique of all kinds of identity politics and identitarian logics. Queer has emerged as a critical force that undermines normative structures and explores and foregrounds those aspects which are excluded by such structures. After more than two decades, queer itself has undergone a number of modifications and repositionings, boundary-crossings and redrawings of boundaries. One notable de-velopment has been, for example, a more sustained rethinking of queer in terms of intersectionality.
Queer has also left its traces in literary studies, as can be seen in the numerous analyses of texts through the lens of queer theory. The resulting array of rather diverse investigations are loosely classed as ‘queer readings’, a term predominantly but not exclusively connected with the literary and queer scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who has presented both incisive readings of individual texts and groundbreaking reflections on the epistemological potential of such readings. The aim of our series of workshops is to explore the different facets of queer theory that can be made productive for the study of literature.
Furthermore, in our project the various disciplinary affiliations of the participants as well as their different national and local contexts enter into the discussion as a major force of questioning and putting into perspective the quasi-natural and almost exclusive referencing of US-American sources in queer studies. This continues to trigger critical reflections on the implications of various local engagements with queer theory.

 

 

CENTRAL Workshops 2020

Acht Projekte erhalten eine Förderung durch CENTRAL

Im Jahr 2020 werden 8 verschiedene Projekte bei der Durchführung von mehrtätigen Workshops durch CENTRAL unterstützt.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Centre and periphery in cosmopolitan Central European urban education: a comparative analysis of four capital cities in the late 19th and early 20th century

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Marcelo Caruso
Partner: Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Karls Universität Prag, Universität Wien

 

This research project aims to strengthen and further the previously established cooperation between educational research groups from universities in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. The research groups held two CENTRAL Kolleg workshops in 2017 („Cultural interactions among Central European capital cities: School systems in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw, 18th–21st century”) and two in 2018 („Cultivating Cosmopolitanism in the Nationalist Era: Central European Capital Cities, 1870–1940“), which serves as the foundation of further cooperation. The current workshop will focus on continuing the research on the appearance of cosmopolitanism in the cultural and educational life of late modern Central European capital cities. The aim of this research project, however, is not to promote or criticize cosmopolitanism ideology but to observe and analyze its manifestations and effects on formal, non-formal and informal education in four capitals, namely Berlin, Budapest and Prague and Vienna. The spatial scope, Central Europe makes it possible to find common characteristic of the represented areas, but also the distinctive hallmarks of the analyzed cities. We have chosen capitals from this region because of their multi-layered nature: on one hand, they represent the respective country and the national identity; on the other hand, they often appear on the horizon of international outlooks. In addition, with their usually multi-ethnic character, they provide a place for research on the parallel ideologies of cosmopolitism and nationalism, and their effects on education and cultural life. While not without its criticism, in the recent decades, as a philosophical precursor to global citizenship, cosmopolitanism has enjoyed a political, as well as an academic revival (cf. Cheah, 2006; Pisani, 2018). Cosmopolitanism, which can only be seen as the result of long processes of education and enlightenment, requires not only external cultivation but also an inner commitment to certain norms, values and insights. It requires continuous discussion and permanent (self-) reflection during its development, which also appear in the field of educational life.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Working/Class/City

Projektleiterin: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Talja Blokland

Partner: Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Karls Universität Prag, Universität Warschau

 

The aim of the workshop is to bring together anthropologists, sociologists and geographers from four CENTRAL-partners to develop a multi-disciplinary shared research perspective on the development of class as social science concept and as lived practice or ‘culture’ in the context of post-socialist de-industrialization and the development of service- and platform economy, and develop a collaborative research agenda. Starting from the idea that not only political systemic changes into post-socialist cities, but also the changing nature of work in neoliberal economies affect people’s lives in the last 30 years, it brings together scholars from Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and, as a contrasting case, the United Kingdom (where work disappeared and affected class-based communities and practices under capitalism) to explore possibilities for a shared research project, for which we will explore funding options, or graduate students’ group application (Graduiertenkolleg). Our main questions are: can we as a multi-disciplinary group of scholars find ways to theorize together the interrelation between historically class-based places where people live and work (neighborhoods, factory sites), their ways of living (habitus) and their resources to organize their lives (or forms of social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital) where industrial work has disappeared and post-industrial landscapes emerged? Would it make sense to do this through case studies in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the United Kingdom, and what would be cases to do so? Can we together explore how the development of where factories used to be (into shopping areas, heritage sites, new developments or other) affects how people can or cannot relate to the changed spatial surroundings where work used to be?

For three days in Berlin, we use workshop discussions with two input talks by invited speakers and site visits as well as a public presentation from preliminary results from a students’ research project in Berlin and a public roundtable event as Think& Drink Special at the Georg Simmel Center to explore the possibilities for collaboration, discuss possible funding strategies and provide a final day of intervision for PhD students and advanced MA students from each institution, where they will present their work in progress. For another two days in Prague, we use a mixture of field site discussions and talking/walking with traditional workshop instruments to develop a shared research program.

 

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Queer Theory and Literary Studies

Projektleiterin: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Eveline Kilian

Partner: Universität Wien, Universität Warschau

 

Queer theory has had a strong impact on the study of gender and sexuality since the 1990s. Its main focus is the deconstruction of the binary gender system and heteronormativity as well as a trenchant critique of all kinds of identity politics and identitarian logics. Queer has emerged as a critical force that undermines normative structures and explores and foregrounds those aspects which are excluded by such structures. After more than two decades, queer itself has undergone a number of modifications and repositionings, boundary-crossings and redrawings of boundaries. One notable development has been, for example, a more sustained rethinking of queer in terms of intersectionality. Queer has also left its traces in literary studies, as can be seen in the numerous analyses of texts through the lens of queer theory. The resulting array of rather diverse investigations are loosely classed as ‘queer readings’, a term predominantly but not exclusively connected with the literary and queer scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who has presented both incisive readings of individual texts and groundbreaking reflections on the epistemological potential of such readings. The aim of our series of workshops is to explore the different facets of queer theory that can be made productive for the study of literature. The workshops typically consist of a mixture of activities, e.g. longer presentations, short papers to introduce seminal texts or short discussion inputs for roundtable discussions. Since we are committed to integrating junior researchers into our activities, the workshops usually include participants from different stages of their academic career, senior as well as junior researchers. PhD and MA students are chosen for the affinity of their dissertation projects to the workshop topic. They either present part of their own project for discussion or introduce a theory text or prepare a short discussion statement.

 

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Law and Society in Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Egypt: Old and New Approaches

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Dr. Lajos Berkes

Partner: Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Universität Warschau

 

Building on the results of our previous Central workshop in October 2019, we intend to continue discussing the impact of regime changes on the implementation of law in the transition from Greek to Roman, and from Roman to Islamic Egypt. We will employ methodologies across legal history, classical philology, papyrology, Egyptology and ancient and medieval history with a special focus on the possibilities digital humanities could provide. As a case study for the Eastern Mediterranean, we are going to focus on everyday documents from Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Egypt preserved on papyrus which provide unique glimpses into the everyday realities of legal practice. The old paradigm of abrupt changes at the moments of political turmoil (the passages from Ptolemaic to Roman Egypt, from Roman to Byzantine, and from Byzantine to Arab dominated, with the added factor of religious and linguistic transformations) has been being slowly replaced by a more continuous model. It is especially true for Egypt, where notwithstanding the alternations of the dominating power, certain aspects of life kept on going unchanged. One can easily observe that in the case of administration and tax system, but also in the continuous use of certain legal and documentary forms. Interestingly there are far reaching analogies in this respect both in the times where the Roman governance replaced that of the Ptolemies’, and when the Arab invasion ended the Byzantine rule of the country. It is thus our aim to look closer at these historical moments trying to comprehend the common factors that may have stood behind this fairly stable evolutionary passages rather than revolutionary.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Functional Translatology in Regional Contexts

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Tamas Görbe

Partner: Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Karls Universität Prag, Universität Wien, Universität Warschau

 

Translating texts into your own language and/or Hungarian is part of the Hungarian studies curriculum at all our partner universities. These courses mainly serve to help you acquire language skills but can also provide insights into translatological issues. We know from experience that students are very interested in translation courses: many undertake their own translation projects and can make good use of the skills they have acquired in their professional lives. However, within the framework of individual curricula, a cross-language translation-scientific approach is only marginally possible. To address this, the proposed workshop is intended to present an extended range of courses. At the same time, it should contribute to raising participants' awareness of relevant language-typological, functional-linguistic, and cultural-scientific issues. We also hope that involving translation science students from ELTE University (Budapest) will result in further professional benefit. Preparations regarding the functional-linguistic aspects of the research project have been running since summer 2019. The project Comparative Functional Linguistics has been running with the participation of all CENTRAL partner institutes as well as other researchers. Its results will partly serve as the basis for the proposed workshop. At our February 2020 international interdisciplinary conference “Language Modalities” (with participants from Hungary, Germany, Austria and Switzerland) at Humboldt University cross-languages issues of mood were discussed. The May 2020 conference “Perspectives of V4 Translation Studies” organized by the University of Prague with the participation of partner institutes from the V4 countries also demonstrates the relevance of the proposed issues.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: New Perspectives in Economies - Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Wolfgang Härdle

Partner: Karls Universität Prag, Universität Warschau

 

The last decade changed the view of how we perceive the value of information. The recent rapid growth of information technology enables us to collect and store huge data regarding our everyday life such as bank transfers, credit cards payments, travel habits, food preferences, body functions etc. With this information overload, the decision-making process is more complicated than ever before. The digital age is also revolutionizing decision making in an economy in ways that we only now are beginning to understand. The growing

Interconnectedness of economic agents, companies, machines, and computers forms new dynamic networks that have changed the nature of interactions and decisions. The traditional view of economic agents making rational decisions is now being confronted with the empirical evidence of suboptimal decisions due to psychological reasons (emotions, social behavior, herd behavior etc.). As a consequence, human decisions are starting to being replaced by the algorithms, commonly denoted as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Like in other fields, economists call for rigorous theoretical research that will help to understand the role of AI, as well as the help of Machine Learning (ML) in understanding the decision making of economic agents. In addition to theoretical research, applied research is at its very early stages too. In our CENTRAL 2020 project, we would like to address current theoretical and empirical issues related to the application of AI and ML in economics. As for the theoretical issues, the inference in ML models and dynamic density forecasting will be of particular interest. In the empirical application, we will concentrate on the broad area of economic and finance such as business cycles and time series analysis, asset pricing, credit risk modelling, dynamic networks in cryptocurrency markets etc. There will be held two workshops throughout in 2020; the first one in Prague (August 27/28), the other in Berlin by the end of the year.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Geographie

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Peter Bagoly-Simo

Partner: Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Karls Universität Prag

 

Geography textbooks and maps constitute a common area of interest across the consortium. International literature on educational media, textbooks, and maps served as theoretical foundation for the work carried out in the three national settings. In addition, all three groups work in a genuine post-socialist context and thus share common educational frameworks, structures, and processes. Despite these similarities, every group explored unique facets and processes using quite different research methods. This variety, however, serves as the starting point of collaborative work to be consolidated during the two CENTRAL workshops. As a result, the first CENTRAL workshop (approx. May 2020, Berlin) aims at consolidating the common grounds for further work. Exploring the five research questions requires theoretical and methodological input. Three keynotes will update the participants regarding theories and methods of educational media research. Subsequent workshops along the main research questions will contextualize previous work along the methodological expertise of each research group. For example, in methodological terms, qualitative methods (widely used at ELTE) will support variable exploration in different national settings in preparation of surveys (already conducted at CU). Eye-tracking studies (vast experience at HU) will help better understand map usage by both teachers and students when working with textbook spreads. Time will be dedicated to develop junior researchers’ transferable skills. The main outcome of the first workshop is the timeline of empirical data collection required to proceed with seeking out third-party funding once the CENTRAL workshops are concluded. The second CENTRAL workshop (approx. November 2020, Prague) will consists of three types of activities. First, empirical data collected, processed, and interpreted at the three universities, will be presented in workshops. Second, content and structure of the different papers will be sketched and refined. Junior researchers under the guidance of seniors play an important role in this process, as this is a great opportunity for skills acquisition. Third, invited experts on funding schemes, grant proposal preparation and submission will work with the stakeholders to identify the most suitable funding scheme available at the end of 2020.  In addition, responsibilities and timelines regarding grant writing will be agreed upon. In sum, the main outcome of the second CENTRAL workshop are clearly distributed roles concerning joint publications and grant application along with a realistic timeline.

 

CENTRAL Workshop: Memory policy in theoretical and practical dimensions

Projektleiter: Humboldt-Universität: Prof. Christian Voß

Partner: Karls Universität Prag, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Universität Wien

 

The objectives of the work plan for inter-university cooperation within the CENTRAL project ("Post-Conflict Constellations: Institutionalization of Memory in Central and Southeastern Europe ”) is a final workshop at the CENTRAL partner university ELTE in Budapest, which will contribute to the exchange of knowledge, support junior researchers in setting up new research groups, and promote multilateral cooperation between top academic centers in Central Europe with a prospect of a project proposal at European level (e.g. a joint Visegrad+ Grand project and/or a ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership/KA2). The planned workshop within the CENTRAL project entitled “Memory policy in theoretical and practical dimensions. Mass violence in the collective memory of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Balkans (1945-2020)” will take place at the ELTE, April 23-25, 2020. At the event organized by Doc. Ildikó Barna (ELTE) in cooperation with Prof. Christian Voss (HU), Dr. Katherina Tyran (Uni Wien) and Doc. Kateřina Králova (UK) will give the opportunity to present research to both senior and junior academics, incl. PhD students. At the same time our junior researchers will be encouraged to cooperate with their counterparts from HU Berlin and prepare participation in joint panels for prestigious international conferences and joint publication outputs.