January 2011
22 posts
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Lars' Blog →
I have had a really nice email exchange with Lars Frers today who was a postdoc at our “Graduiertenkolleg” when I started in Darmstadt in 2006. He had been in Darmstadt for quite some time before that and now I am enjoying browsing through his extensive blog as some sort of archeology of “our” scientific community. But its also worth checking out what he has been working on...
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H-Urban training
Finally starting my training as an H-Urban editor. There have been many obstacles in the way over the last month or so, but now we are getting started.
LLRO Visit
Spent most of the afternoon at Leicester and Leicestershire Record Office with Richard Rodger to try out how to reproduce images for an edited volume on the history of Leicester. It’s always such a drag to reproduce historical images and get the copyright straight.
Great interview with Bernard on "our" off-space →
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Book Chapter on "Stadtindianer"
Finally, after 4 years, or so, my chapter “’Stadtindianer’ and ‘Indiani Metropolitani’” has been copy-edited. The edited volume entitled “Between the Prague Spring and the French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980” will hopefully be published by this summer. It was in 2006 that the conference the book is based on took place. It was one...
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NYT Article on "blight" in Philadelphia →
Nothing really new! EVERYTHING described in this NYT article has been done in Philadelphia over the last half-century - with mixed success. Maybe it would be worth looking at the history of urban renewal to inform current policy!
Organizing Disaster: Civil Protection and the... →
Just saw that Michael Guggenheim got a ERC starter grant for his project on civil protection. Congratulations!
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Book Chapter on Squatted Buildings and Nuclear...
The draft of the book chapter on Squatted Buildings and Nuclear Free Zones is complete. Now I am waiting for Susanne, my co-author’s, comments and her part to it and hopefully by the end of February we will have the chapter ready for publication.
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Map Collection
Today I discovered the “Map Room” at the Leicester Centre for Urban History. I have been working here for 2 months now without knowing of its existence. Great collection of historical Ordnance Survey Maps I want to look into to see if mining is traceable.
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Post-War British University Architecture
At yesterdays Urban History Seminar William Whyte (St John’s College Oxford) was giving a presentation on “The University and the City in Post-War Britain”. It was really on the architectural history of British Universities - definitively an interesting field of research. And again, I learned a lot about British history. The talk was extremely well delivered. However, the narrative was...
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Resource of sources in planning history →
Just came across a used book dealer’s website specializing on planning and architectural history. The offers are very expensive, but it gives quite an overview over the market in historical planning literature. Telling from the descriptions it seems like there are collectors of these books out there …
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Tackling 1980s Autonomy →
Once again I am trying to outline, what “autonomy” meant in the context of 1970s and 1980s protest movements - especially in their relation to space. And once again I have to admit that George Katsiafica’s book is probably the best account available, even though his obvious political alignment on the issue is extremely annoying.
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Last steps
Finally getting to the more fun parts of the publication business: selecting an image for the cover and providing a draft for the announcement of the book - we are getting there!
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Letting go ...
Preparing last steps for the publication of my dissertation with Steiner Verlag. Reading over the text at this point in the process is frustrating - there are so many things that I could have written differently - is that normal?
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Network 45+
There will be a new research network on post-1945 architecture. I decided to take part and discuss a proposal for research on the construction of images for West-German public housing in the 1960s and 1970s. There was a huge shift from the predominance of positive to negative images which still prevail today. If things go well it might lead to some interdisciplinary project addressing the...
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Book Chapter on Squatted Buildings and Nuclear...
I spent most of the day outlining a book chapter I am writing together with Susanne Schregel. It is based on a paper we gave at a conference in Bremen last May. The contribution to the edited volume will be on both squatted buildings and nuclear free zones. We want to show how locality mattered in these specific protest forms. Deadline for the chapter is the end of February - so it is still plenty...
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New Website launched
I have finally found the time to launch my new website. This has been on my agenda for quite some time.
With this website I want to give an overview over my research and teaching as an urban and environmental historian. I also want to share my various interests that go beyond the purely scientific engagement with urban life, cities and their environment.