SFB 1671:  Home(s): Phenomena, Practices, Representations

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Geosciences ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2024
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517096657

The projected Collaborative Research Centre looks into how notions of home emerge as central to how we relate to the world. Our aim is thus to analyze the varied dimensions of home with the help of a heuristic theory of models that we will apply from a historical and global comparative perspective. The German term from which we set out – Heimat (home, at-homeness, belonging) – has a complex semantics that has changed many times since the early modern period and has acquired a richly ambiguous texture, especially in light of its connection to semantically related conceptual fields (at home, house, place, community, motherland / fatherland, nation etc.), both in German and other languages and cultures. It is precisely this semantic and experiential complexity that makes home a suitable starting and reference point for interdisciplinary research beyond the modern German-speaking world. We examine concepts and practices of natural and sociocultural interconnectedness in very different social, medial and cultural contexts. Here, home is understood as a dynamic model that can be applied to a wide range of contexts from the pre-modern to the present. We believe that by operationalizing home we can create a productive research effort that links many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Our project combines research in history, musicology, art history, theology and ancient and modern philology, ranging from the modern period back to the Middle Ages and ancient antiquity, to explore the diverse phenomena of social and individual bonds to territorial spaces and social groups; homing practices and discourses of belonging and foreignness. We also emphasize regional (area) studies perspectives, examining global dimensions of home, for example in East and Southeast Asia, in North and Ibero-America and in Europe. Current concepts and dimensions of home will be modeled in discourse-analytical or empirical approaches by PIs from sociology, ethnology, geography and law. Placing a theory of models at the centre of the research programme ensures a more advanced perspective: at issue are not timeless characteristics of home or a mere history of the term, but rather the heuristic creation of diverse modeling objects that elucidate conceptualizations, practices, and performances of home and their common points of reference. Our collaboration thus aims to offer a research configuration that connects the humanities and social sciences and enables us both to coordinate the diversity of conceptions and to produce a sound scholarly model of home as a common basis for interdisciplinary debate.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• A01 - Phenomenology of Home in Archaic Greek Poetry (Project Head Grethlein, Jonas )
• A02 - The Lost and Longed-for Home in the Exilic Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Project Head Gertz, Jan Christian )
• A03 - The Discovery of Home. Literary Concepts and Imaginations of Belonging in the Middle Ages (Project Head Lieb, Ludger )
• A04 - Jerusalem, the Distant Origin: Palestinian Orders of the Middle Ages and their Concepts of Home (Project Head Jaspert, Nikolas )
• A05 - Conceptions of Home in German-Language Songs of the Early Modern Period (Project Head Wiesenfeldt, Christiane )
• A06 - (Not) at Home in the World? – Implicit Modelling of Home(s) in the Protestant Theological Discourse of the 20th and 21st centuries (Project Heads Bachmann, Arne-Florian ;  Ebert, Patrick )
• A07 - Homelessness and Emancipation. Revisions of Home in the Modern Age (Project Head Oesterhelt, Anja )
• B01 - In Search for Home – Musical Practice in East Asia (Project Heads Menzel, Stefan ;  Mittler, Barbara )
• B02 - Searching for Home Between House and Neighbourhood in Nepal (Project Head Brosius, Christiane )
• B03 - The Taste of Home: Food and Environment in Bioregionalism and Rural Southeast Asia (Project Heads Kirchhoff, Thomas ;  Sprenger, Guido )
• B04 - A Place Called Home?“ Changing Dynamics of Home(s) in North American Urban Neighborhoods (Project Head Gerhard, Ulrike )
• B05 - Space and Belonging in Socio-ecological Conflicts over Land and Resources in Mexico (Project Head Lehmann, Rosa )
• B06 - Home „am Phantasma“: Deictic Imaginations of Lost and Hoped-for Lifeworlds of German-speaking Jews Forced to Emigrate (Project Head Stukenbrock, Anja )
• B07 - Kitchen and Garden. Home Practices by Activists in Latin America (Project Head Campos Motta, Renata )
• C01 - Modelling of Home(es) in Museums (Project Heads Arendes, Cord ;  Peltzer, Jörg )
• C02 - „Des Deutschen Vaterland“. Heimatkunde in Children’s Rooms and School Lessons. A German-German comparison (Project Head Patzel-Mattern, Katja )
• C03 - Spiritual and Heavenly Home in Performing Action of Christian Denominational Cultures (Project Head Nüssel, Friederike )
• C04 - Visual Ciphers of Home in the Visual Arts, Literature and Film (Project Heads Keazor, Henry ;  Vinzenz, Alexandra ;  Winkler, Daniel )
• C05 - Heartlands: Home as a Moral Landscape in Anglo-American Literature (Project Head Leypoldt, Günter )
• C06 - Home Outside and Inside – Artistic Self-positioning of Psychiatric Patients around 1900 (Project Heads Rotzoll, Maike ;  Röske, Thomas )
• C07 - The Law of Origin as an Ambivalent Model for Home: Reconstructing the Personal Statute in Private International Law (Project Head Rentsch, Bettina Konstanze )
• INF - Home Data: Research Infrastructure and Multilingual Modeling (Project Heads Atayan, Vahram ;  Bodgan, Babych ;  Felder, Ekkehard )
• Z - Central Tasks of the Collaborative Research Centre (Project Head Wiesenfeldt, Christiane )
• Ö - Home(s) in the Public Sphere (Project Head Wiesenfeldt, Christiane )

• Applicant Institution: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Participating University: Freie Universität Berlin; Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf; Philipps-Universität Marburg
• Participating Institution: Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft e.V.; Institut für interdisziplinäre Forschung (FEST)
• Spokespersons: Professorin Dr. Friederike Nüssel, since 4/2026; Professorin Dr. Christiane Wiesenfeldt, until 4/2026