Welcome to the website of the DFG Research Training Group 2227 “Identity and Heritage”. The Research Training Group is a joint institution of the Technical University Berlin and the BauhausUniversity Weimar. The Berlin University of the Arts, the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences Dessau and the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt are partners of the Research Training Group.

The Research Training Group offers 14 doctoral students and up to 8 associated students funded by third parties the opportunity to do their doctorate in an outstanding and unique interdisciplinary environment, under the joint supervision of researchers from Berlin, Weimar, Dessau and Erfurt as well as the support by important cooperation partners. The team also includes a post-doctoral researcher, who primarily strengthens the sociological focus of the research programme.

This research training group seeks to promote the critical study of constructions of identity and heritage based on architectural structures, historical sites, and other, primarily material, cultural legacies. Interdisciplinary analyses in cultural theory are combined in the research training group with the close observation and interpretation of the form and material constitution of the respective objects. The goal of research is to strengthen theoretical points of access to a democratic understanding of cultural heritage.

The subjects involved are Architecture, Sociology of Planning and Architecture, Archival and Literary Studies, Conservation and History of Architecture, European Cities and Urban Heritage, History, Cultural Studies, History of Art, Landscape Architecture, Urban Planning, Planning Theory and History of Urbanism.

News

11.10.2022

Connecting Things: Objects and Heritage Constructions

The registration for the 6th annual conference of the Research Training Group in the Architekturforum at the Technische Universität Berlin is online! This year’s conference focuses on the research objects of our PhD researchers. How are things ascribed symbolic meaning, and often multiple and potentially conflicting meaning? How are narratives that inform heritage references linked to such things? What role do things play in the formation of new or as yet under-recognised constructs of heritage?

The DFG Research Training Group invites its guests to raise such open theoretical questions. The conference is not only a space in which to present research outcomes, but also a forum for reviewing established research approaches, contexts, and situations. The standard lecture format is complemented by a poster-exhibition on the objects being researched by the Research Training Group, which takes place in the foyer next to the Architekturforum.

To attend the conference "Connectings Things" please register free of charge here.

31.08.2022

Study Trip of the Research Training Group Identity and Heritage to Skopje, Pristina and Sarajevo

September 1-10/2022

More than two decades have passed since the last Balkan war, and the territory of the former multi-ethnic state is divded up by the borders of new nation states. With its research trip to Northern Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Research Training Group “Identity and Heritage” focuses on places, things and people that can inform ways of dealing with cultural heritage that is contested or has become meaningless in the present. What pasts have left traces in the urban spaces of Skopje, Pristina and Sarajevo? What are the challenges of coexistance and of the finding of common narratives, and who are the people who face these questions?

30.03.2022

Lecture series in summer 2022

The conflicts concerning cultural heritage in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia are in the focus of this lecture series. The politics of history around architectures, monuments, urban planning and archives in the region of former Yugoslavia are shaped by the memories of the socialist heritage, its national prehistories and the interventions of NATO in the 1990s.
Furthermore, our guests will talk about the technologies of knowledge tradition, Congo's colonial past, the memory of the Holocaust in social media and the appropriation of history in re-enactments. All lectures are open to the public.

Find more information about our guests and the lecture topics.