Social imagining as a network of humans and media

Imaginamics: Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining

The Cluster of Excellence initiative aims to contribute to a better understanding of social conflicts and debates by researching social imagining.

Social imagining as a network of humans and media

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Social Imagining – Outline of the research programme

A functioning society requires not only rules, procedures and institutions, but also shared ideas, narratives and images. The social practices of sharing these ideas, narratives and images constitute what we call ‘social imagining’. It involves the creation of communally distributed, intersubjectively recognised imaginaries that provide orientation and stability in everyday life.

Social imagining can hold societies together and promote solidarity, but it can also generate differences and divisions. It can facilitate unity and forge bonds, but it can also lead to forms of exclusion and violence. It can strengthen and stabilise social structures, but it can also trigger new dynamics and spark change. Social imagining shapes current debates about the climate crisis and the future of the planet, public disputes over the pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the future of democracy and the resurgence of right-wing extremist ideologies. For these reasons and more, social imagining is a topic of pressing relevance both in Germany and around the world.

Despite the long tradition of research on social imaginaries, the practices through which they gain their social and political significance and stimulate social and political dynamics have remained an epistemic ‘black box’. Our research makes an innovative contribution by focussing on these practices, processes and dynamics; hence our name Imaginamics: Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining.

The Cluster of Excellence initiative Imaginamics aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of social imagining. To this end, it (1) combines research approaches from the cultural sciences, humanities and social sciences; (2) links foundational theoretical approaches with empirical studies and digital explorations; (3) expands upon current debates on social imagining by including transepochal and trans-cultural perspectives; (4) develops a set of instruments to describe and explain social dynamics more precisely and to enable critical reflection on them.

Structurally, Imaginamics is anchored in the LIBERTY research profile area.

Spokespersons

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Prof. Dr. Johannes Gravede Johannes Grave, professor of art history, is the spokesperson of Imaginamics. In 2020, he received the Leibniz Prize for his work in the history of art, focusing on the time around 1800, Romanticism and early modern art.
Image: Jan-Peter Kasper (University of Jena)

Prof. Dr. Christina Brandt Christina Brandt is professor of History and Philosophy of Science, director of the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus and deputy spokesperson of Imaginamics.
Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Prof. Dr. Joachim von PuttkamerExternal link Joachim von Puttkamer is professor of Eastern European history, director of the Imre Kertész Kolleg and deputy spokesperson of Imaginamics.

Principal investigators

Name	Field of expertise	Research portfolio
Katharina Bracht	Ecclesiastical history	History of ancient Christianity and patristic studies; social imagining of Christian identity; figures/role models of the bible. For further information please see the CVpdf, 116 kb
Christina Brandt	History and philosophy of science	Metaphors and narration in experimental sciences; imaginaries of the future in life sciences and society; scientific racism (Haeckel). For further information please see the CVpdf, 98 kb
Andrea Marlen Esser	Philosophy (focus on practical philosophy)	Practical, political and public philosophy; practices of colonial imagining in philosophical contexts. For further information please see the CVpdf, 92 kb
Bernd FroehlichExternal link	Virtual reality and visualisation	Social virtual reality and collaborative visualisation; 3D user interfaces; virtual group locomotion techniques; visual analytics. For further information please see the CVpdf, 84 kb
Daniel FuldaExternal link	Modern German literature	Theories of narration; histories of concepts and metaphors; imaginations of temporality in historiography, literature and visual media; imagining enlightenment. For further information please see the CVpdf, 101 kb
Johannes Grave	Art history	Image theory and temporality of picture reception; early modern art; social imagining and Romanticism; intersections of practice theories and studies on image perception. For further information please see the CVpdf, 93 kb
Bernhard Groß	Film studies / visual aesthetics of cinematic media	Film theory and its history; filmic representations of the Holocaust; history, poetics and mediality of filmic representations of the everyday life. For further information please see the CVpdf, 93 kb
Claudia Hammerschmidt	Romance literature (focus on Latin American literatures)	Foundational fictions, border poetics and strategic essentialism in postcolonial cultures; (de)colonial imaginaries in Latin American and indigenous cultures and literatures. For further information please see the CVpdf, 102 kb
Bernhard KleebergExternal link	History of science	Political/historical epistemology; historical praxeology of truth; relationship between knowledge and belief, science and religion; practices of structured imagination. For further information please see the CVpdf, 102 kb
Anja Laukötter de	Cultural history	History of museums, collections and exhibitions; transnational media history; history of emotions; practices of social imagining in colonial pasts and their contemporary legacies. For further information please see the CVpdf, 99 kb
Sophie Marshall de	Mediaeval German literature	Human-thing relations in mediaeval and early modern literature; imaginary dimensions of materialities; myths, allegories and commentaries; magic thinking and practices. For further information please see the CVpdf, 77 kb
Stefan Matuschek de	Modern German literature, general and comparative literature	European Romanticism as a practice and theory of imagining; myths, ‘new mythologies’ and their political impact; literary historiography and the imagining of national identity. For further information please see the CVpdf, 90 kb
Stefanie Middendorf de	Modern and contemporary history	History of capitalist imaginaries and crises; social representations of the political; state thinking, institutional imagining and micro-practices of power. For further information please see the CVpdf, 101 kb
Matthias Perkams de	Philosophy (focus on ancient and mediaeval philosophy)	Philosophy in Antiquity, in the Christian Orient and in the Middle Ages; Arabic philosophy of the classical period; theories of consciousness, imagination and ethical/political action. For further information please see the CVpdf, 86 kb
Joachim von PuttkamerExternal link	Eastern European history	Statehood and nationalism; museum studies and the politics of memory; democracy, dictatorship and reimagining society in Central and Eastern Europe. For further information please see the CVpdf, 93 kb
Marion Reiser de	German politics	Empirical research on representative democracy, political elites and political parties; democratic and antidemocratic attitudes; imaginaries and practices of representation. For further information please see the CVpdf, 101 kb
Jürgen RennExternal link	History of science	Long-term evolution of knowledge and structural changes in the technosphere; historical dynamics and origins of the Anthropocene. For further information please see the CVpdf, 98 kb
Patrick RobertsExternal link	Archaeology and anthropology	Human history in tropical forests; human-environment-Earth system interactions; social imaginaries in the modelling of human-ecosystems dynamics; indigenous and traditional knowledge practices of imagining. For further information please see the CVpdf, 80 kb
Hartmut Rosa	Sociology and social theory	Sociology of time and acceleration; sociology of relationships to or with the world; social criticism; political imaginaries, social imagining in times of crises; temporal imaginaries. For further information please see the CVpdf, 99 kb
Tobias Rothmund	Psychology of communication and media use	Political communication; motivated cognition; political ideology; digital publics; conspiratorial narratives; post-truth media reception. For further information please see the CVpdf, 90 kb
Henning SchmidgenExternal link	Media studies	History and theory of media practices; media ecologies; philosophies of technology; history of scientific instruments; machine aesthetics, digital humanities; virtual laboratories. For further information please see the CVpdf, 95 kb
Kim Siebenhüner	Early modern history	History of material cultures and global encounters; history of religion; colonial heritage in Thuringia; material, emotional and sensual dimensions of social imagining. For further information please see the CVpdf, 92 kb
Christoph Vatter	Intercultural studies and business communications	Cultural diversity; intercultural media studies; transcultural dimensions of social imagining; Afro-European practices of (re)imagining Europe. For further information please see the CVpdf, 102 kb
Lambert Wiesing	Philosophy (focus on image theory and phenomenology)	Phenomenology, image theory and aesthetics; philosophy of perception, imagination and consciousness; individual and social imaginative performances. For further information please see the CVpdf, 90 kb
Sabine WirthExternal link	Media studies (digital cultures)	User-interfaces; AI and everyday media practices; digital image cultures in the social web; media technologies and practices of social imagining; collective practices of counter-imagining. For further information please see the CVpdf, 91 kb