Related Projects
Research Training Group ‘Critical Infrastructures’
The Research Training Group ‘Critical infrastructures: construction, functional crises and protection in cities’ at the Technical University of Darmstadt began its research activities, initially planned for a period of four and a half years, on 1 October 2016. In the College, which is sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), historians, infrastructure and land use planners, civil engineers, philosophers, political scientists, architects and IT specialists work together.
African Studies Rhine-Main!
In December 2015, the three universities of the Rhine-Main area founded a university alliance. The page africanstudies-rheinmain.de is part of it. The initiative aims at connecting the research on Africa at all three locations, coordinating the spectrum of research and developing new collaborative research projects.
Link for the Africa Studies Homepage
Graduade Program Africa – Urban Infrastructures in Transition: The Case of African Cities
The programme “Urban Infrastructures in Transition” focuses on developments in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Nairobi (Kenya). In particular, it highlights the history of, and the current challenges posed by, urban infrastructures – the supply and use of water, energy, sewerage, transport and telecommunication services. Within this framework, researchers critically investigate the tensions between internationally circulating technological and urban ideals and models in the planning, design and construction of cities (especially those of a “networked city”) on the one hand, and local processes of creativity and adaptation on the other hand.
The interdisciplinary programme has been funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation and URBANgrad since October 2014. The research of currently one postdoctoral and 12 PhD scholars covers the following academic subjects: spatial and infrastructure planning, urban development and design, history of technology, economic geography and global studies.
Link for the Graduade Program Africa
Making Modernity IN East Asia – Technologies Of Everday Life, 19th – 21st Centuries
Professor Angela Ki Che Leung, together with an international team, has been granted a total of HKD 6,626,216 by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong under the Collaborative Research Fund Scheme (2016-17 Exercise) in support of a multi-disciplinary research project “Making Modernity in East Asia – Technologies of Everyday Life, 19th – 21st Centuries (C7011-16G)” for 3 years from June 2017.
The main objective of this collaborative project is to establish a new, interdisciplinary way of understanding East Asian modernity through the lens of everyday technology. We ask: Why do East Asian societies engage with modern technology the way they do today? The project is about a history of East Asia that emphasizes the region’s technological dynamism in the last 200 years. It is a history of planning, engagement, maintenance, resilience and innovation. This project will place technology at the center of 21st-century debates on the rise of a new East Asian world order.