“The end approaches but the apocalypse is long lived…”
Jacques Derrida
How do we conceptualise the end of the world? What of the many worlds that have already ended? As anthropogenic climate change, increasingly polarized politics, and the COVID-19 pandemic anticipate the end of worlds, the idea of the apocalypse is gaining traction in popular and scholarly discourses. Apocalyptic imaginaries saturate artistic practices, media-narratives, political debates, socio-economic discourses and speculative imaginations. Simultaneously, apocalypses and their imagined aftermaths produce emancipatory and creative potentials that engage the possibility of plural worlds, embodied futurities, and non-linear temporalities.
At CAPAS, the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University, we employ a transdisciplinary research approach that examines radical changes and breakdowns, in order to think through the systemic ruptures that affect societies, individuals, and environments and to explore the dynamics of catastrophes and end time scenarios in the past, present, and future.
Each year we invite up to ten international fellows, who engage with the topic of the apocalypse in a series of projects, lectures, and workshops. In order to foster a diverse and international research perspective, many of our fellows’ discussions and projects are presented on PubPub to open them to a broader audience and to encourage transdisciplinary knowledge transfer between our cohorts and international academics engaged in the complexities of the apocalypse. Our fellows’ contributions appear as work in progress and may collate collaborative projects, interdisciplinary exchanges or article drafts.
You will also find information about our interdisciplinary, international, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal Apocalyptica as well as updates on the Centre’s recent publications, newsletters, and lecture series.
