UChicago-Berlin University Alliance Workshop Grants
Bridging UChicago’s robust ecosystem with Berlin’s vibrant research landscape to supports new pathways for thought and discovery.
This mechanism is part of a strategic initiative aimed at fostering interdisciplinary collaboration to address global issues that demand coordinated international and cross-sectorial responses. By bridging Chicago’s robust ecosystem with Berlin’s vibrant research landscape, this initiative supports new pathways for thought and discovery, student and scholarly exchange, and the co-development of scalable, novel solutions.
The below UChicago awardees will organize joint workshops with counterparts from the Berlin University Alliance (BUA): Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and/or Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Our present moment in history is characterized by radical ecological, social, and technological transformations—ones that challenge the very idea of human self-determination. This gives new urgency to the age-old question “What is a human being?” What is distinctively human about our forms of cognition, sociality, and agency? Fortunately, thinkers today do not have to start from scratch when turning to these questions. One of the richest sites of articulation of human mindedness is the tradition of Classical German Thought associated with the Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, Goethe, and Marx. Their work was a response to the radical ecological, social, and technological transformations that took place in the late 18th and 19th Century, and which gave rise to challenges not dissimilar to ones we face today. The project brings together scholars in Germanic Studies, Philosophy, and Political Theory from UChicago, FU and HU Berlin to investigate the potential and limitations of this tradition for the articulation of a new humanism in response to our present predicament. The project will take place in a series of three workshops that will be held in Berlin: (1) Aesthetic Forms of Mindedness, (2) Social Forms of Freedom, and (3) Technological Forms of Agency.
Charged and polar groups play crucial roles in the structure, function, and interactions among diverse macromolecules in biology, including proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids. Both instrumental and theoretical/computational methods are driving new insights into such important fundamental matters as protein folding and misfolding, aggregation, membrane interactions, active polymers in the cytoskeleton, formation of membrane-less organelles and other biological condensates. On the practical or clinical side, polyelectrolytes can be employed in therapeutic nanoparticle formation, drug delivery, orthopedic treatments, and much more. In all these fields, many concepts and techniques elaborated in polymer science and polymer physics are highly useful to tackle problems related to biological polyelectrolytes. For this reason, we propose to have a workshop bringing together researchers that span a wide range from polymer physics to medical applications. The goal of this workshop will be to explore the strength of expertise in the understanding and application of biological polyelectrolytes on the Berlin and UChicago sides and work toward the creation of a joint International Research and Training Group Program.
PAT has shown great promise as a treatment of psychiatric disorders, but we have limited understanding of the processes that underlie its therapeutic value. Until now, the focus of PAT has been on the experiences of the individual patient. However, there is both scientific and clinical evidence that psychedelic drugs alter social perception and cognition. Social processes are deeply involved in interactions with therapists during treatment and their relationships beyond the therapy room: The drugs produce feelings of connection, shift values, self-conception, communication, and power dynamics. These social or relational effects are likely to contribute to the impressive therapeutic benefits of PAT. We propose to bring together a unique, multidisciplinary group of 20 experts to examine these relational aspects of psychedelic drugs. We have identified outstanding experts including clinicians, basic laboratory scientists, and social scientists from UChicago, the BUA and other institutions. During the workshop the participants will examine the role of social and relational aspects of psychedelic drugs in therapy, explore new partnerships and seed future collaborative research.
This international interdisciplinary project is organized by colleagues at UChicago, Freie Universität Berlin and beyond to examine ethical, political, and legal debates surrounding “ecocide” – crimes against the environment. It brings together environmental humanities scholars, lawyers, artists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and geographers, and explores questions of evidence and forensics, memory and grief, individual accountability, and systemic and infrastructural injustices.Structured in four thematic clusters, it builds a year-long conversation – 1) first through a series of four online meetings in which invited participants develop a shared conceptual framework and vocabulary; 2) a culminating in-person workshop at FU Berlin (June 2026). As part of the in-person workshop, we will host a keynote lecture, and a book talk on Tsymbalyuk’s “Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War” (Polity, 2025) (UChicago) in conversation with Susanne Strätling (FU Berlin).“Reckoning with Ecocide” is rooted in engagement with students. Students at Tsymbalyuk’s Winter 2026 course “Ecocide: Reckoning with Environmental Violence” (UChicago), and students in Susanne Strätling Summer 2026 course “Leak. Politics and Poetics of Pipelines” (FU Berlin) will produce posters that will be presented during the in-person workshop.
This project initiates a new collaboration between the Urban Theory Lab at the University of Chicago and the Habitat Unit at TU Berlin to explore the role of non-city landscapes in supporting contemporary urbanization processes—for instance, through their role in supplying cities with resources, energy, and labor, and in absorbing their waste. These operational landscapes—such as mining zones, agricultural regions, energy corridors, and waste dumps—are vital to urban life but remain largely invisible in urban studies, planning, and policy. Approaches to planetary urbanization, developed by several of the researchers in this project over the last decade, offer a more holistic, approach to questions of urban sustainability that have become especially urgent in relation to contemporary environmental crises. The centerpiece of this initiative is a two-day workshop in Berlin (June 2026) that will bring together scholars, designers, and practitioners to share research, conceptual proposals, methodological strategies, fieldwork experiences, and experimental cartographic tools. This collaboration will generate multiple concrete outcomes, including: (1) a jointly authored position paper outlining key research questions and methods for studying planetary urbanization and the hinterland question; (2) the development of new comparative visualizations and data tools; and (3) planning for future joint research projects and funding applications.