Annual conferences / workshops

WITH/OUT IDENTITY. On the Question of Identity Constructions in Spaces, Heritage and Communities

On the one hand, vagueness and the questionable tendency to essentialise the term lead to a certain avoidance of its use. On the other hand, referring back to concepts of identity provides an important frame of reference – especially for those communities that are refused to articulate history, memory and bodies of knowledge themselves. The construction of spaces and cultural heritage is crucial to the question of how identity is appropriated, negotiated or asserted in social, political and thus also physical spaces. The 7th annual conference of the Research Training Group therefore understands the concept of identity as a projection field in which groups and communities constitute themselves and imagine commonalities in reference to spatial as well as material cultural heritage. For a critical examination of identity constructions, the conference will take up current and socio-political discourses on heritage and […]