FOR 5856:  Energy Entanglements. Actors, Spaces and Narratives in Eastern Europe

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 543294515

The research group "Entangled Energies" investigates energies as polyfunctional fuels of cultural, political, social and economic development. At the center of our interest are debates around the extraction, circulation and use of energies, which are associated with profound transformations of environments, social structures and cultural policies. We examine both the challenges posed by these transformations and the approaches to overcoming them, with a specific focus on Eastern Europe and a comparative analysis of neighboring regions. Despite the immense importance of Eastern Europe as an area of energy production and energy transfer, but also as a trigger and arena of escalating energy conflicts, the region has so far played a marginal role in the energy humanities. The research group takes up these virulent debates, but sets new priorities that develop from three interlinked key questions. Firstly, we investigate competing narratives: which terms, topoi and concepts shape energy discourses? Secondly, we examine spatial orders: how do the extraction and circulation of energy and the (re)organization of resource spaces intertwine? Thirdly, we look at the actors: in which formal and informal networks do human and non-human actors shape energy environments? These complex questions can only be adequately addressed in an interdisciplinary context. In the research group, literary and cultural studies, political science, history, sociology and economics are therefore collaborating closely to establish a new research paradigm for Energy Humanities East.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkey, Uzbekistan

Projects

• Biographical Footprints of Energy and Political Elites in Russia and Kazakhstan (Applicant Libman, Alexander )
• Communicating Pipes. Pipelines as Networking Media (Applicant Strätling, Susanne )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Strätling, Susanne )
• Energy Transitions in Eurasian (Post)Empires: Russia and Turkey in Comparative Perspective (Applicant Grigoriadis, Theocharis )
• Making Hydropower from Below in Wartime Ukraine since 2014 as a Lens for Analyzing Wartime Society (Applicant Lambroschini, Sophie )
• Power fluctuations. Energy vulnerability and social resilience in Moldova (Applicant Kindler, Robert )
• Renewable Energy in the Post-Soviet Space: from late-Soviet heritage to enabler of decentralization and of new entanglements (Applicant Beuerle, Benjamin )
• Resources of the Future: Energy Sources and Scientific Elites in Late and Post-Soviet Science Fiction and Popular Scientific Publications (Applicant Schwartz, Matthias )
• Water Energies structuring space: Between Soviet Modernity, nation-building and global ecologies (Applicant Frank, Susanne K. )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Susanne Strätling