DIMAS | CITAS

Im Rahmen dieses Seminars werden die Beiträge von Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften zur Erforschung von Umweltkonflikten analysiert. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Analyse der Wechselwirkungen zwischen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Faktoren sowie deren Einfluss auf ökologische Prozesse und lokaler Veränderungen. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt auf den sozialen Ungleichheiten, die durch Umweltveränderungen, Ressourcenkonflikte oder extraktivistischen Praktiken entstehen.

Overview | Taking its cue from the men's FIFA World Cup hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico, the ScienceCampus is organizing a lecture series at the University of Regensburg in summer semester 2026. The talks by scholars based in Regensburg, across Germany and the world will address a range of sports and their intersections with soft power, hard power, diplomacy, security, economics and identity- building. Contributions come from a range of disciplines, including history, cultural studies, economics, gender studies, sociology, political science and sports science.

This lecture series brings together voices from history, media studies, sociology, economics law, and beyond – alongside journalists, athletes, and cultural critics. Taking its cue from debates around the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada, the series adopts a broad temporal and spatial approach to the intersections of sport, politics and conflict.

Open to students, researchers and the public, the interdisciplinary lecture series offers a chance to explore how sport intersects with identity, ideology, and global power.

This Hauptseminar introduces you to video games as cultural spaces and as platforms for developing cultural literacies. We will examine how games communicate cultural meanings through medium-specific multimodality, "folk mechanics" (Ensslin 2024) and intercultural pedagogy; we will engage with theories of critical play and postcolonial game analysis, with the goal to develop the critical tools to analyze and evaluate videogames with respect to processes and means of appropriation, essentializing, stereotyping, and othering. At the same time, we will examine the economic dictates and constraints underlying commercial game design, that inform medium-specific aesthetics. We will engage with World Games, transregional game studies and ludofolklore by studying a range of digital narratives from and about diverse regional and ethnic communities. We will examine how games communicate historical, social and cultural values and concerns, and how they might contribute to the decolonizing of game design and game studies. Through a variety of critical and creative assignments and activities, we will work towards developing a critical, interculturally literate attitude towards gameplay and game design.

Students will be working in small teams on a scholarly and creative portfolio that includes videogame analysis and design. You will be assessed on (a) a joint presentation during the semester and (b) a jointly developed and compiled project to be submitted to GRIPS by 30 September 2026.

We will focus on the local and global issues that the five independent republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and their adjunct neighbors (Northern Afghanistan, Western China, etc.) are facing. 
We will start by locating the region historically and geographically, while also questioning the very notion of Central Asia and the neighboring influences which have shaped the five countries. In terms of topics, we will cover the Soviet legacy, domestic politics, Islam, relations between the State and civil society, economic developments, border dynamics, center-periphery relations, foreign policy, and the role of international actors. When applicable, students will be introduced to theories of political science and international relations to make sense of concrete events going on in Central Asia.

An emphasis will be placed on the various visual data available to study the region. Short videos, artistic initiatives, photographs, and other online resources will be showcased to make the students familiar with the diversity of sources available and infuse the importance of triangulating them.
No background knowledge is necessary to take this course. 

Since at least the nineteenth century, European empires have conducted military interventions into the Middle East, but the character of these interventions arguably took on a new character as populations in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq organized and carried out mass uprisings and revolutions against colonial powers, such as the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. Much more recently, Western powers conducted various kinds of interventions into Middle Eastern countries during the Arab Spring, which began in 2010. How have these Western interventions shaped the politics and culture of societies in the Middle East? How have Middle Eastern actors reflected on the disproportionate influence of external actors on their own societies? And how have actors from intervening countries reflected on the meanings of these foreign interventions for their own countries politics and culture? These are just some of the questions we will explore in this seminar, focusing on European reactions to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and to the Arab Spring. Along the way, students will learn about the history of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, as well as the transition in Western approaches from colonialism and mandates to humanitarian interventions and trauma-based activism. This course, which will be conducted in the English language, assumes no background knowledge about Middle Eastern history, nor are students expected to have a background in regional languages. 

This workshop offers keys and tricks to
conducting interdisciplinary ethnographic fieldwork in remote, isolated, or
rural contexts. They are understood as, but not limited to, places with
restricted internet or phone connections, hard to physically access due to
administrative obstacles and/or lack of infrastructure, locations in high
mountain settings, etc. It is designed for students of all social science
disciplines who wish to conduct fieldwork in such environments, at any stage of
their research. The course will provide them with efficient practices to plan
their research trip, to overcome difficulties on the field and use them as
analytical data, and to make the most of the peculiarities of remote areas. The
class is also open to students wishing to learn more about interdisciplinary
ethnographic methods of data collection.

This is the GRIPS course for the Leibniz-ScienceCampus Lecture Series (Ringvorlesung) War.Peace.Security | Krieg.Frieden.Sicherhei

Kurz nachdem die Nationalsozialisten im Januar 1933 an die Macht gekommen waren, legalisierten sie die Zwangssterilisation von als erbkrank klassifizierten Menschen. Diese schnelle Umsetzung von bereits vor 1933 vorhandenen eugenischen Vorstellungen, die eine Verbesserung der Bevölkerung durch eine selektive Geburtenpolitik erreichen wollten, unterstreicht die Bedeutung, die die Nationalsozialisten der Eugenik bereits in der Frühphase des Regimes beimaßen. Dabei unterschieden sie zwischen „lebenswertem“ und „lebensunwertem“ Leben. Im nationalsozialistischen Krankenmord, der euphemistisch als „Euthanasie“ bezeichnet wurde, kamen ähnliche Kategorien zur Anwendung wenngleich die Motive und die Radikalität der Vorgehensweise von den eugenischen Eingriffen zu unterscheiden sind. Während der sogenannten Aktion T4 wurden alleine zwischen 1940 und 1941 um die 70.000 psychisch und körperlich kranke Menschen in sechs zentralisierten Tötungsanstalten ermordet.

Das Seminar bietet eine Einführung in die Etablierung des nationalsozialistischen Regimes und beschäftigt sich im Anschluss daran mit nationalsozialistischer Geburtenpolitik ab 1933. Begleitet werden diese Darstellungen durch die Behandlung ausgewählter eugenischer Gesetze in den USA, Japan, Schweden oder Südafrika. Dadurch wird die Spezifik nationalsozialistischer Geburtenpolitik in einem internationalen Vergleich herausgearbeitet. Abschließend wird diskutiert, wie der Krankenmord in die Geschichte nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen einzuordnen ist.

Das Seminar bietet eine Einführung in die Geschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus in Afrika, Asien und Polynesien, die in den größeren Kontext der Geschichte dieser Regionen, der europäischen Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts und der Geschichte des Deutschen Kaiserreiches eingeordnet wird. Als Fragen stehen im Vordergrund: Wie genau funktionierte die Aneignung von außereuropäischen Ländern und Regionen durch europäische Mächte? Wie wurde rechtlich über die Übernahme von sogenannten Schutzherrschaften über koloniale Gebiete gedacht? Welche Formen von Widerstand, Kooperation oder Duldung durch die lokale Bevölkerung können ausgemacht werden? Welche Dynamiken gab es zwischen deutschen Siedlern und der Kolonialverwaltung? Und in welchem Verhältnis stand das deklarierte Ziel der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung des Kolonien zur brutalen Gewaltgeschichte in diesen Räumen? Zu Ende des Seminars sollen Sie ein Verständnis über koloniale Ideologien, Kulturen und Praktiken entwickelt haben und unterschiedliche geschichtswissenschaftliche Zugänge zum Thema diskutieren können. Ebenso wird die Geschichte des Kolonialismus in Bezug zu aktuellen erinnerungspolitischen Auseinandersetzungen über den Zusammenhang zwischen Kolonialismus und Holocaust, die Restitution von kolonialen Objekten und deren kontroverser Musealisierung diskutiert.

Human rights are ubiquitous in contemporary debates. While some refer to human rights to denounce injustices and human suffering, others criticize human rights as a Western concept that might even serve as a cover for military interventions. The seminar approaches these disputes from a historical perspective to argue that the meaning, scope, and relevance of human rights have been contested since their inception. The seminar will offer readings on specific examples of human rights policies from the 18^th century to today and include topics like the role of human rights in the French, American, and Haitian Revolutions, human rights advocacy of state and non-state actors, the regionally diverse codification of human rights, gendered notions of human rights, or decolonization and human rights. The seminar will further discuss different theoretical and methodological approaches for studying such a history. A large group of diverse actors will come into focus including governments, transnational actors, the League of Nations, the United Nations, international lawyers and NGOs. At the end of the seminar students will have the ability to understand the main historical shifts of human rights conceptions, be able to describe politically and regionally diverse interpretations of human rights across time, be familiar with the main debates in the historiographical literature, and be in a position to independently formulate and answer a research question on the topic. Students of all disciplines are welcome to participate. The core reading will focus on historiographical, sociological, and legal contributions.

This lecture series adresses one of the pressing questions of human
kind – climate change. It approaches this issue from different
disciplines ranging from law to ethnography. Legislation and especially
the Paris Agreement have been a step towards international cooperation
in combating climate change – now actions and implementation need to
follow. Questions about deforestation, litigation, the circular economy,
and sustainable urban planning will be adressed in different regions in
the Global South and beyond the West.

Where and When? Summer Semester 2023 | Mondays, 16-18  | H14

Organized by Prof. Dr. Rike Krämer-Hoppe (DIMAS/ Law, UR) and Dr. Paul Vickers (DIMAS / ScienceCampus)

This forum is for all members and associates of the ScienceCampus, as well as for other interested individuals, to share ideas, ask for advice, and develop collaborations - and whatever else is useful

In diesem praktisch orientierten Blockseminar beschäftigen wir uns mit
den Überschneidungsbereichen zwischen Platt/Formen digitaler
("digital-born") Literatur und kritischer digitaler
Geisteswissenschaften. Wir beleuchten historische und zeitgenössische
Formen verbaler Medienkunst mit besonderer Berücksichtigung narrativer
Formen, wie z.B. Hypertext und Interactive Fiction, generative und
KI-gestützte Netzliteratur, literarische Computerspiele, Literatur in
sozialen Medien, Netprov und mobile Story-Apps. Im Bezug auf die
digitalen Geisteswissenschaften erörtern wir Möglichkeiten des Distant
Reading und Critical Making, die letztlich den Hintergrund studentischer
Einzelprojekte darstellen werden.