Centre for Collection Development

Die Zentrale Kustodie, die Professur für Materialität des Wissens und das Lichtenberg-Kolleg kooperieren eng im Bereich Forschung. Sie haben mehrere Fellowships an promovierte Wissenschaftler*innen vergeben, die zu den Themenbereichen Wissensforschung, Sammlungspraxis und Wissenskommunikation forschen und in diesem Rahmen die herausragenden Bestände der über 30 akademischen Sammlungen der Universität nutzen.

Dies sind unsere aktuellen und ehemaligen Fellows und ihre Forschungsprojekte:

  • Professorin für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, HU Berlin

    Projekt: The Museum and Its Current Debates: Politics and Collections

    Seitdem das Buch „Theorien des Museums“ 2012 (Junius Verlag) erschienen ist, sind 8 Jahre vergangen. Bevor es Ende 2020 in die vierte Auflage gehen wird und zwei weitere Übersetzungen anstehen, hat Anke te Heesen die Zeit in Göttingen genutzt, um dem Buch ein weiteres, aktuelles Kapitel über die jüngsten Entwicklungen des Museums hinzuzufügen. Im Zentrum des neuen Kapitels stehen die Aspekte einer zunehmenden Politisierung, eines verstärkten Interesses für die Sammlungen/das Depot und die Provenienzforschung. Während ihrer Zeit in Göttingen hat sie an diesem Kapitel gearbeitet und verschiedene Versionen mit den Stipendiaten des Kollegs und den Mitarbeitern der Kustodie sowie des Lehrstuhls Materialität des Wissens diskutiert.

  • Aufenthalt: 01.04. bis 30.09.2020

    • Associate Professor of History, Sewanee: The University of the South (USA) and Experienced Research Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

      Projekt: Useful Science, Youth and the Pedagogies of Innovation in the Early Modern World

      The project studies how changing expectations about the capacities, potential and playfulness of young people informed new efforts to create a culture of innovation, including more “useful knowledge,” in early modern central Europe. It considers how instructional manuals, project sketches, object-based pedagogies, collecting strategies and accounts of young geniuses or prodigies were used by various professional groups, including political economists, to direct new technologies toward the future and the solving of pressing problems. There has been a surge of interest in project-making recently, especially among historians of science and technology interested in the idea of the knowledge economy. My research contributes to these ongoing conversations by recovering the work of educational reformers, who understood themselves to be involved in a coordinated effort to transform society by introducing realia and object lessons into schools. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these reformers advocated sustained attention to the methods that young people deployed in order to learn what was useful about the objects, materials and technologies housed in collections yet also frequently found in workshops, households and estates.

    • Aufenthalt: 01.04.2020 bis 31.03.2021

      • Senior Research Associate, Reconstructing Sloane, British Museum

      • Projektbezogene Publikationen/Papers:

        Martha Fleming completed the following publications during her tenure:

      • 'Embodied ephemeralities: Methodologies and historiographies for investigating the display and spatialization of science and technology in the twentieth century' History of Science 2019-07-22, DOI: 10.1177/0073275319858528
      • 'Digital Humanities in the Memory Institution: The Challenges of Encoding Sir Hans Sloane’s Early Modern Catalogues of His Collections' Open Library of Humanities, 2019-06-26, DOI: 10.16995/olh.409 Part of ISSN: 2056-6700
      • The Pervasiveness of Photography: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Collecting Photography25Years! Fast Forward FotomuseumWinterthur: Shared Histories, Shared Stories, ed Doris Gassaert, Part of ISBN: 978-3959052665
      • Aufenthalt: 2018

        • Associate Professor, Hong Kong University

          Projekt: Visualizing the Plant: Knowledge- and Image-Making in the Herbarium 1545-1800

        • Aufenthalt: 29.11. bis 29.12.2013

          • Research Assistant , Deutsches Museum München

            Projekt: Precision of Scientific Instrumentation - Claims, Meanings and Reproducibility

          • Aufenthalt: 04.bis 11.11. und 24.11. bis 13.12. 2013

            • University of Bochum

              Projekt: The beginnings of the collection of Greek and Roman antiquities at the university of Göttingen date back to the 18th century. This collection never evolved into a veritable university museum such as in Bonn or Würzburg (Graepler 2001). Instead it always functioned as an instrument of scholarly teaching and research. To this collection in Göttingen, the classical archaeologist and former director of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel, Johannes Boehlau (1861–1941), bequeathed his scientific estate as well as his collection of more than 1.000 fragments of ancient Greek pottery upon his death in 1941. In the context of the collection of Greek and Roman originals at the Georg August University Göttingen the humble potsherds brought together by Boehlau form a fascinating body of objects from a museological perspective: Around the turn of 20th century, when Boehlau assembled these pieces, fragments were generally not considered valuable enough for museum or academic collection. Instead, the focus of collecting lay on complete objects; sculptures, coins, terracotta figurines and vases. In a way, this collection reflects Boehlaus scholarly innovativeness and a synoptic analysis of this body of objects together with his written estate will show how advanced archaeological knowledge was gained and preserved before World War II. Only through the conservation of this unique context of objects within the framework of the academic collections at the University of Göttingen, it is possible to reconstruct this epistemic archive and its impact on later archaeological research. Thusly emphasizing the leading role within the »Klassische Altertumswissenschaften« that Göttingen held before World War II. Our proposal is for a twofold approach, that reflect the scholarly interests and competences of the applicants: N. Panteleon will investigate the relevance of the Boehlau collection in regard to the current state of affairs in research of East Aegean pottery, while I. Panteleon will analyze the relations between the textual and material contents of Boehlau’s estate. In a final step, the applicants will synthesize their results and elaborate how and to which extent the Boehlau collection impacted on academic research and teaching at the Institute of Archaeology at the Georg August University Göttingen and beyond. [mehr zum Projekt/Abstract]

            • Projektbezogene Publikationen/Papers: Ioannis A. Panteleon, "... und entspricht unserer entente cordiale, die wir mit den besten unter ihnen haben" - Konzilianz und Konflikt zwischen deutschen und französischen Archäologen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, in: B. Schmidt - A. Asso - M. Manske (Hrsg.), Kontaktzone Meer. Reisende im Ostsee- und Mittelmeerraum vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Hamburg 2015).

            • Email: ioannis.a.panteleon@rub.de
            • Aufenthalt: 14.10. bis 24.11.2013

              • Berlin

                Projekt: The Department of Art History at the University of Göttingenhouses a rich collection of works of art. It was founded in the 18thcentury explicitly for teaching purposes and as such is the oldest of its kind in Germany. Its curator was Johann Dominicus Fiorillo (1748-1821), whoseappointment as a professor of art history in 1813 is generally considered to be the first step in the establishment of art history as an independent academic discipline(vgl. Dilly 1979, 174-183; Middeldorf Kosegarten 1997). The study collection of the 18thcentury consisted foremost of prints, drawings, and paintings, which has continually been enriched to works ofsculpture, arts and crafts and video art up till now. Nevertheless,photography asthe most important teaching tool of anyart historian since the last decadesof the 19thcenturyhas definitely not been paid the attention it deserves. My project is intended to fill this gap.The functionof photography as a teaching tool is underlined by the significant fact already pointed out 40 years ago by Heinrich Dilly that the perception of art was shaped by looking at photographsrather than (the) originals(Dilly 1975). Recent research provides manifold evidence of the role of photography as an indispensable instrument in the study of works of art(Hamber 1995; Tietenberg 1999; Peters 2000/2003; Ratzeburg 2002; Caraffa 2009; Bader/Gaier/Wolf 2010). Not only did it serve as a substitute of the original –unattainable because elsewhere –so that the art historian could study it on his own desk, it also established the comparative visual analysis as vitalart historical method. This makes perfectly clear the form analytical attribution debates of the 19thcentury would have been impossible without this method. But photography was more than an individual working tool, it became a driving force of privateand –as soon as the progress of printing processes allowed -a publicdiscourse on art which manifesteditself,above all,in art historical publications(Krause/Niehr/Hanebutt-Benz 2005; Krause/Niehr 2007). [mehr zum Projekt/Abstract]

              • Projektbezogene Publikationen/Papers: Dorothea Peters, Auf Spurensuche. Giovanni Morelli und die Fotografie. In: Herta Wolf (Hg.): Aufzeigen oder beweisen? Die Fotografie als Kulturtechnik und Medium des Wissens, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag (im Druck).
              • Email: dorothea_peters@yahoo.com
              • Aufenthalt: 18.10. bis 28.11.2013

                • Junior Research Group Leader, Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics, University of Bonn

                  Projekt: It is very well known that the University of Göttingen played a pivotal role in the develop-ment of mathematics in the early twentieth century, attracting international researchers andambitious students eager to interact with some of the most brilliant mathematical minds ofthe time, who happened to have Göttingen as their home. There was a climate of intense in-tellectual activity that went rather remarkably unscathed through the First World War, andwhich reached its peak right before the rise of the Nazi party and its seizure of power in 1933.Under the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufbeamtentumsenforced in that year, a greatnumber of the most prominent academics at the Mathematical Institute in Göttingen weredispersed within the space of just a few months — either by force of their Jewish connections,or out of ideological dissent with the new regime.In these golden years of Göttingen (and German) mathematics, a spirit ofinter-disciplinarity that was quite unique at the time pervaded the lifeof the Mathematical In-stitute. This was in part due to the presence of key figures such as Felix Klein and David Hilbert, and later Richard Courant, Hermann Weyl and Emmy Noether, who not only weregeneralists with a broad spectrum of scientific interests (transcending mathematics itself),but who also fostered a sense of community with activities that wentbeyond lecture and1 office times. Many were the occasions for scientific discussions in a relaxed atmosphere, fromregular dinners to walks in the countryside. The impact of this community on the shapingof mathematics as we know it today was tremendous, and it also served as anest for youngmathematicians who went on to make successful careers elsewhere. [mehr zum Projekt/Abstract]

                • Projektbezogene Publikationen/Papers: Kolloquium: "Hilbert as outreacher and the genesis of 'Anschauliche Geometrie'", Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Goettingen, 15th of October 2013.
                • Email nromao@uni-math.gwdg.de
                • Aufenthalt: 16.09. bis 16.10.2013

                  • Research Fellow, Deakin University, Australia

                    Projekt: Since the 18th century, the academic discipline of anthropology has emerged through scientific exploration and colonial expansion beyond Europe, as well as the establishment of ethnographic collections and museums in Europe. Ethnographic objects thus influenced academic and public understandings of other cultural-geographic spaces. The often resulting Eurocentric projection of anthropological imaginations has come under severe pressure while (post)colonial renegotiations in former European colonies, such as many Pacific nations, have caused dramatic changes to anthropological practices through Indigenous curatorial practices. The project 'Assembling the Transpacific: Indigenous Curatorial Practices, Material Cultures and Source Communities' shapes a dialogue between both situations through a multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic investigation of contemporary Indigenous curatorial practices in three Pacific museums (Bishop Museum Hawai’i; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; Museo Rapa Nui, Easter Island). The project generates historically informed, ethnographic insights into ‘the figure of the curator’ as an agent of Indigenous knowledge production and community engagement across the Pacific. In doing so, the project presents Indigenous perspectives that assist in reframing the curatorship of Pacific collections in, and the production of public understandings through, ethnographic museums in Europe. [mehr zum Projekt]

                  • Projektbezogene Publikationen/Papers: Schorch, P., McCarthy, C. & Hakiwai, A. (forthcoming). Globalizing Maori museology: Reconceptualizing engagement, knowledge and virtuality through mana taonga. Museum Anthropology.
                  • Email Philipp.Schorch@ethnologie.lmu.de
                  • Aufenthalt: 21.10. bis 22.12.2013