Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Central

Previous Kollegs

2018


Virtual Reality 1.jpgSeeing with your heart: Influences of cardiac cycle on perceived distances to threatful and harmless objects - A study in immersive virtual realities

The general goal of the project is to investigate the influence of bodily signals on the perception of the external environment. A growing literature shows that information stemming from the internal organs of the body can actively shape various psychological processes. In this project, we will focus on the role of cardiac signaling (measured by electrocardiography) in the processing of external sensory inputs. To this effect, we will desigVirtual Reality.jpgn, conduct, and analyze an experiment by the means of virtual reality technology. Realization of such project requires a set of complementary skills from various fields (provided by the junior scientists involved) and offers a multitude of teaching and learning opportunities for the students who will join the project.

 

 

 

Project Leaders: Felix Klotzsche (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Pawel Motyka (University of Warsaw), Iveta Fajnerova (Charles University)

 


Cultivating Cosmopolitanism in the Nationalist Era: Central European Capital Cities (1879-1940)

This year's workshops served as a follow-up research for the 2017 Kolleg about "Cultural interactions among Central European capital cities: School systems in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw, 18th-21st century". Special emphasis lay on the exploration of the educational history of the above mentioned capital cities by means of international comparative analysis. Furthermore, the role and influences on the ideas of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism that offen arose within the areas of such cities between the fin de siècle and WWII were to be visualized by the participants. Undertaken researches from july until december 2018 contributed to refining the common research framework and publication of a scientic chapter (Szábo, Báles&Nemeth 2018).

 

Zoltán András Szabó (Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft) Bohuslav Rejzl (Karl-Universität, Department der Geschichte der Bildung) und Daniel Töpper (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaften), provided guidance to the participants.

 

 


To Begin with...Dialectics, Materialism and Mathematical Formalism in Hegel and Badiou

The project seeks to confront the philosophical systems of G.W.F. Hegel and Alain Badiou by focussing their respective position concerning the relation between philosophy and science. The center point is the study of the beginning of Hegel's 'Science of Logic' and Badiou's early comment on this crucial passage in his book 'The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic'. Following this comment the projects wants to challenge dialectical thought with the modern mathematics of set theory. This task therefore aims at a transdisciplinary research between philosophy and mathematics to ask for a contemporary thinking between science and philosophy.

 

Project Leaders: Armin Schneider (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Dr. Wolfgang Herold (University of Vienna), Martin Vrba (Charles University)

 

2017


 

CENTRAL-Cemeteries: Cemetery as a Place of Negotiation and Construction of History and Memory

This year’s workshops served as a follow-up project for the 2016 Kolleg “Cemetery as an artifact and memorial site in central European border areas.” Participants were given the chance to further analyse the data collected in 2016, work on their individual research papers and prepare the launch of the CENTRAL cemeteries website. The aim of this web-application is to inform all interested people in and outside academia about the results of their collective work. The kick-off and final workshops were held in Berlin and served as a platform for exchange and discussion. A visit to the Museum of European Cultures provided the participants with the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the problem of identity and ethnicity and to raise questions and discuss the ways in which history is interpreted and (re)presented in public space.

 

Under the guidance of Ferdinand Kühnel (Department of Eastern European History, University of Vienna), Snežana Stanković (Slavonic Studies, Humboldt-Universität) and Soňa Mikulová (Institute of International Studies, Charles University in Prague) participants of all three partner universities met in Berlin in October and December.

 

 


Consciousness in medieval and early modern philosophy of mind

This year’s CENTRAL-Kolleg “Consciousness in medieval and early modern philosophy of mind” focused on consciousness as a philosophical concept. Participants of the University of Vienna, Budapest and Berlin investigated what it means to have phenomenal experience of mental processes and how we can have access to our mental states. They focused on analysing how these issues were approached in medieval and early modern philosophy, and particularly, on the commonalities and breaches between them.

 

Under the guidance of Martin Klein (Excellence Cluster Topoi, Institute of Philosophy, Humboldt-Universität), Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum (Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna) and Olivér István Tóth (Institute of Philosophy, ELTE Budapest) the participants met for a kick-off and final workshop in Berlin.

 

 


Cultural interactions among Central European capital cities: School systems in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw, 18th - 21st century

Participants from Budapest, Berlin and Prague came together in this year’s CENTRAL Kolleg “Cultural interactions among Central European capital cities: School systems in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw, 18th - 21st century“ to investigate the history of the respective educational systems and the bi- and multilateral knowledge exchange between the Central European cities joined in the CENTRAL network. Their cultural, educational and intellectual relations were put into focus as well as transfer processes. The kick-off workshop was designed to encourage the participants to discuss the theoretical and methodical framework and formulate their specific research questions. The participants utilized the final workshop to present their findings and discuss how to proceed in the future. The publication of the results and an international conference were planned for 2018 and 2019 as well as the continuation of the project with a focus on “Cultivating Cosmopolitanism in the Nationalist Era: Central European Capital Cities (1870-1940).”

 

Ami Kobayashi (Institute of Education Studies, Humboldt-Universität), Bohuslav Rejzl (Faculty of Education, History and History Didactics Department, Charles University in Prague) and Zoltán András Szabó (Institute of Education, ELTE Budapest) provided as junior researchers guidance for the participants.

 

 


From language contrast to language contact - Corpus linguistic approaches to language contact phenomena (2017)

This year’s project was designed as a follow-up workshop to the 2016 Kolleg “Empirical perspectives on area-typological aspects of language contact and language change.” Building upon the research conducted in 2016 and already established networks, the participants worked in teams on four major research topics: “Areal variation in case government of the German verb vergessen ‘to forget’,“ ”The frustrative construction ne a ne + INF in Czech and Slovak,“ “PUT verbs in light verb constructions in Czech and German“ and “Verb acquisition of German-Russian sequentially bilingual children“. The results of their collective work will be published in the near future and further (research) projects are being planned. Some of the participants have decided to further elaborate the research findings in their respective MA or BA theses. The results of the sub-project “Areal variation in case government” have been summarized in poster form by Agnes Kim and Sebastian Scharf and are available online.

 

The kick-off and final workshop took place in July and November in Berlin. Agnes Kim (University of Vienna, Department of Slavonic Studies), Karolína Vyskočilová (Charles University, Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication) and Uliana Yazhinova (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Slavonic Studies) supported the participants as junior researchers.

 

 

 

 

2016


Kolleg 2016_Linguistik.jpgEmpirical Perspectives on area-typological aspects of language contact and change

The CENTRAL-Kolleg "Empirical perspectives on area-typological phenomena of language contact and language change" was intended to provide the participants of University Prague, Vienna and Berlin with the opportunity to develop and execute research projects in the field of linguistics. The students collaboratively investigated selected language contact phenomena by employing recent corpus linguistic methods and thereby contributed to establishing up-to-date empirical methods in contact linguistics. They focused on synchronically oriented research on such phenomena of microvariation in the Central European languages Czech, Slovak and German which can be explained by language contact and are described as forming linguistic areas at the same time.

Further information can be found in the event report and on the project homepage.

 

Agnes Kim (University of Vienna, Department of Slavonic Studies), Karolína Vyskočilová (Charles University, Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication) and Uliana Yazhinova (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Slavonic Studies) supported the participants as junior researchers.

 

 


Kolleg 2016_Friedhöfe.JPGCemetery as an artifact and memorial site in central European border areas

The CENTRAL-Kolleg “Cemetery as an artifact and memorial site in central European border areas” aimed to give participants an understanding of the importance of cemeteries as source and memorial site. Furthermore, it equipped the students with a theoretical and methodical tool-kit to tackle historical, linguistic, political, and anthropological research questions. Focussing on central European border areas and societies located the project within the focus region of the CENTRAL network. The kick-off and final workshops gave the participants not only the opportunity to engage with the topic and prepare and present their research questions but also to do some fieldwork on cemeteries in the Oberlausitz and in Berlin.

 

Under the guidance of Ferdinand Kühnel (Department of Eastern European History, University of Vienna), Snežana Stanković (Slavonic Studies, Humboldt-Universität) and Soňa Mikulová (Institute of International Studies, Charles University in Prague) participants of all three partner universities met in Berlin in October and December.