Urban Lab: Towards a colonial-critical city

• Duration: 05/2023-08/2024
• Funded by the Lower Saxon Ministry for Science and Culture's programme "Future Discourses"
• Description: The urban lab provides space for exchange and the joint exploration of paths towards a colonial-critical city of Göttingen. The project aims to gather perspectives, connect knowledge and shape commemoration. In addition to processing local colonial history, the urban lab aims to increase the visibility of anti-colonial resistance and colonial continuities to this day. The project focuses on participation: all people in Göttingen are invited to get involved and participate. The urban lab calls for a public collection of objects, documents and other pieces of historical evidence in order to build an "open archive". Stories that are currently still lying in drawers in attics and cellars will be studied and made accessible. The urban lab is particularly interested in historical traces and biographies of people from formerly colonised areas and of past and present anti-colonial resistance in Göttingen.
• Project partners at the University of Göttingen: Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, Göttingen Diversity Research Institute, Centre for Global Migration Studies
• External partners: Göttingen Postkolonial, Entwicklungspolitisches Informationszentrum Göttingen (EPIZ), PLEA e.V., boat people projekt, Literarisches Zentrum Göttingen
• Project lead: Prof. Dr. Sabine Hess (Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology)
• Contact persons at the Göttingen Diversity Research Institute: Prof. Dr. Andrea D. Bührmann, Elena Futter-Buck, Dr. Doreen Müller

Collection call: from the cellars to the open archive