Lars Frers (cv & background)
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Contents
(Looking for a brief bio? Check out the participants section of the Routes’ project website.)
Currently I am developing social science courses for foreign students at Telemark University College, where I am also employed as a researcher. Besides the usual article publications I focus on my next book project with the working title From meaning to sense – Social science in motion.
Before that I completed the research project Geodata, Policing and Urban Development (developed by Jan Wehrheim and Susanne Krasmann) at the University of Hamburg. My job was to do a pre-study that generates an overview of how German police and urban development institutions use crime-related geodata. More specifically we looked at how they use GIS to visualize this data, and how these actors link different kinds of data with each other to produce meaningful graphs, live maps, and so forth. In this study I used a standardized survey for the first time – we then integrated the quantitative data with expert interviews and qualitative approaches.
In 2009 and 2010 I participated in the Norwegian research project Routes, Roads and Landscapes : Aesthetic Practices en route, 1750 - 2015. For this project I performed research on rest stops along the Norwegian Tourist Route – an exceptionally interesting and rewarding setting. The pecha kucha style video below provides an overview of my contribution to the Routes project:
My study for the Routes project had the title Impressive landscapes : Entanglements of nature and culture. I did ethnographic fieldwork at two rest stops/view points along the Norwegian Tourist Route which have been furnished by well-known designers and landscape architects. For this project, I explored new video-related methods (people at the site film specific aspects of the site while they talk about it). My goal was to get some insight into how nature and architecture and the relation between these two is perceived by people at the site, and thus how it enters into their local practices. I already gave a few presentations on this: you can find a recording of the presentation that I gave at the annual conference of the RGS-IGB: Route interruptus. A Study of Fatigue, Erosion and other material agencies. A chapter on this is close to being publishing too, I will link it here as soon as it is available.
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The tag cloud displayed below was generated with my bibliography software. It shows the 100 most frequent keywords that I have assigned to entries in my bibliography (currently about 1500 titles):
Publications (print only)
| Books / Special Issues | |
| Special issue: Absence. Materiality, Embodiment, Resistance. Journal: Cultural Geographies | accepted |
| Guest editor, together with Lars Meier and Erika Sigvardsdotter | |
| Einhüllende Materialitäten – Wahrnehmungshandeln an Bahnhof und Fährterminal, Transcript Verlag | 2007 |
| series Materialities reviewed by:
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| Editor: Encountering Urban Places – Visual and Material Performances in the City, Ashgate Publishing | 2007 |
| series Re-Materializing Cultural Geography, together with Lars Meier reviewed by:
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| Editor: Negotiating Urban Conflicts – Interaction, Space and Control, Transcript Verlag | 2006 |
| series Materialities together with Helmuth Berking, Sybille Frank, Martina Löw, Lars Meier, Silke Steets and Sergej Stoetzer (also co-authored introduction) reviewed by:
| |
| Thesis: Den Marlene-Dietrich-Platz erleben – Konstellationen im Stadtraum | 2001 |
| diploma thesis in the subject of sociology – written at the FU Berlin | |
| Peer-reviewed Articles | |
| The matter of absence | accepted |
| in: Cultural Geographies | |
| Ethnografie und Aufmerksamkeit – Zur phänomenologischen Perspektivierung der Feldforschung | accepted |
| in: Geographica Helvetica | |
| Herausfordernde Materialitäten – Gegenstände, Methoden, Konzepte | 2009 |
| in: Berichte zur deutschen Landeskunde 83(2): 177-191 | |
| Space, materiality, and the contingency of action: A sequential analysis of the patient’s file in doctor-patient interactions | 2009 |
| in: Discourse Studies 11(3): 285–303. DOI: 10.1177/1461445609102445 | |
| Chapters and other Articles | |
| Stop, rest, and digest. Feeding people into nature | 2011 |
| in: Mari Hvattum, Brita Brenna, Beate Elvebakk, Janike Kampevold Larsen (eds) Routes, Roads and Landscapes, Ashgate Publishing | |
| Abfall & Eleganz: Materialität vs. Kultur? | 2010 |
| in: Sybille Frank and Jochen Schwenk (eds) Turn Over. Cultural Turns in der Soziologie, Campus: 107-123 | |
| Automatische Irritationen : Überlegungen in Video zur Initiativentfaltung der Dinge | 2010 |
| in: Gesellschaft für Ethnographie e.V., Elisabeth Tietmeyer et al. (eds) Die Sprache der Dinge : Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf die materielle Kultur, Waxmann: 195-202 | |
| Video research in the open – Encounters involving the researcher-camera | 2009 |
| in: Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann (ed.) Video interaction analysis : Methods and methodology, Peter Lang: 155-177 | |
| Encyclopedia entry: Ibn Khaldun | 2008 |
| International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2nd edition, volume 3, Macmillan Reference USA: 545-546 | |
| Encountering Urban Places – Visual and Material Performances in the City | 2007 |
| with Lars Meier, in: Frers, Meier (eds) Encountering Urban Places – Visual and Material Performances in the City, Ashgate Publishing: 1-7 | |
| Perception, Aesthetics and Envelopment – Encountering Space and Materiality | 2007 |
| in: Frers, Meier (eds) Encountering Urban Places – Visual and Material Performances in the City, Ashgate Publishing: 25-45 | |
| Working with the Visual | 2007 |
| with Lars Meier, in: Frers, Meier (eds) Encountering Urban Places – Visual and Material Performances in the City, Ashgate Publishing: 171-181 | |
| Pacification by Design – An Ethnography of Normalization Techniques | 2006 |
| in: Berking, Frank, Frers, Löw, Meier, Steets and Stoetzer (eds) Negotiating Urban Conflicts – Interaction, Space and Control, Transcript Verlag: 245-258 | |
| Normalization and Constraint – Socio-Spatial Constellations at the Marlene-Dietrich-Platz in Berlin | 2003 |
| in: Jutta Allmendinger (ed.) Entstaatlichung und soziale Sicherheit. Verhandlungen des 31. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Leipzig, Leske&Budrich | |
| Globalisierung und Steuerung der Stadtentwicklung – ein Konflikt | 1998 |
| together with Jan Hebecker und Stefan Wiese – report of the project seminar on urban development HU Berlin (organized by Hartmut Häußermann) | |
| Reviews | |
Kenneth Liberman Husserl’s Criticism of Reason – With Ethnomethodological Specifications(Lanham/MD: Lexington Books, 2007) |
2008 |
| in: Husserl Studies 24(2): 159-166. DOI: 10.1007/s10743-008-9037-3 | |
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Academic interests
I can name some of the fields or aspects of the social sciences that are of particular interest to me. Classical social theory was at the beginning of my interest in sociology: Reading works by authors of the Frankfurt School, and reading Marx; using them to put Weber and other social theory into a critical light was central for me during the first semesters of my university career. Now, I am still interested in the wider context of critical theory and, as many others, I would love to find some more time to involve myself in Benjamin’s Passagenwerk. Furthermore, I am convinced of the importance of post-structuralist writers like Foucault and de Certeau, and I am constantly inspired by French social theory between Bachelard and Bourdieu. A strand of philosophy that has become particularly important during the work on my dissertation is phenomenology, mainly in accordance with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body and the senses. Sometimes, I enjoy to browse through real classics like Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima (a work from the late fourteenth century) or Michel de Montaigne’s Essais.
The other main area of interest for me is space, materiality, and the body. Originally, this interest comes from my occupation with urban sociology. The three authors who woke my interest in concrete stuff as it displays itself in space, materiality and the body are Richard Sennett, Henri Lefèbvre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (in biographical order). They offer particularly insightful, and often contentious perspectives on space, the body, material objects, social control, and social change. With my postdoctoral research project, I also started to engage myself with nature
. For me, materiality and the social are intertwined in many subtle, intriguing, and politically/socially highly relevant ways.
Finally, I am interested in two particular research traditions – science and technology studies (STS) and ethnomethodology. Authors like Bruno Latour and authors like Andrew Pickering opened up a new perspective on the production of science in its everyday practices – a perspective which is put into use in other areas of the social sciences more and more every day. Regarding ethnomethodology: I keep being fascinated by the amount of information that can be recovered through the use of the analytic tools offered by this approach, particularly in its guise of conversation analysis (CA). I also am intrigued by the way in which CA and ethnomethodology in general show the skill with which people master the enormous and continuous complexities of everyday interaction, and by the respect ethnomethodologists have for their subjects’ own interpretations of reality. This tradition, however, seems to have failed to leave its mark in the wider social sciences.
By now, you might be wondering why I put all this stuff online – there are, of course, several reasons: one of the most important is that I want to document at least part of the process that will eventually produce science. Doing research, orienting myself in the field, changing directions, getting distracted – all this plays a part in the production of knowledge. Usually, these dirty
and confusing aspects of doing science are cleaned away before the final product is presented, showing off a nice, pure, and sophisticated work of science. Since part of my motivation is to show what role the dirt and grub of everyday life plays in society, I do not think it would be appropriate to ignore the dirtier aspects of doing research. The other main reason is what I learned at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science: if my research is funded by the public, it should be freely available (and accessible) to the public and not hidden away on some library shelves or only available for money. The WWW is a wonderful resource, we should participate in making it even better. Engage yourself in similar efforts: support OpenAccess, the Creative Commons, and the Wikipedia project.
Curriculum vitae
| Education and Research | |
| Researcher, project Geodata, Policing and Urban Development | April – Sep 2011 |
| Universität Hamburg | |
| Researcher, KULVER program, Routes project | first half 2009 |
| Oslo School of Architecture and Design | |
| Guest researcher, TIK center | Fall 2007, Fall 2008 |
| Universitet i Oslo | |
| Postdoc, DFG research training group Topology of Technology | Dec 2006 – Nov 2008 |
| Technische Universität Darmstadt | |
| degree: Ph.D. in sociology | Nov 2006 |
| (grade: very good) | |
| Ph.D. candidate, DFG research training group Technology and Society | April 2003 – April 2006 |
| spokesperson, Technische Universität Darmstadt | |
| degree: Diploma in Sociology | Feb 2002 |
| (grade: very good) | |
| Indiana University Bloomington | Sep 1999 – May 2000 |
| graduate program in sociology | |
| Freie Universität Berlin | Oct 1996 – March 2003 |
| main subject: sociology; minor subjects: political science and psychology | |
| Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel | April 1995 – Sep 1996 |
| main subject: sociology; minor subjects: political science, psychology, and law (also visited courses in: philosophy/logic, contemporary German literature and Scandinavian studies) | |
| Fellowships / Externally Funded Projects | |
| application grant ERC Starting Independent Researcher | Nov 2009 |
| for the Ideas program in the 7th Framework, grant provided by NFR and the University of Oslo | |
| research project Routes, Roads and Landscapes – Aesthetic Practices en route 1750 – 2015 | Jan – July 2009 |
| guest researcher scholarship, Oslo School of Architecture and Design / Norges Forskningsråd (Norwegian Research Council), KULVER program | |
| Graduiertenkolleg Topology of Technology | Dec 2006 – Nov 2008 |
| postdoc scholarship, Technische Universität Darmstadt / DFG | |
| Graduiertenkolleg Technology and Society | April 2003 – April 2006 |
| dissertation scholarship, Technische Universität Darmstadt / DFG | |
| Indiana University Bloomington | Sep 1999 – May 2000 |
| direct exchange scholarship, IU Bloomington – FU Berlin | |
| Selected Presentations (last four years only) | |
| From meaning to sense – Accountability on the hither side of words | May 2012 |
| Workshop Sensory powers and urban life, Gothenburg University (Sweden) | |
Zurück zu den Sachen selbst.Zu Widerständen, Zwängen und Freiheiten bei der Methodenwahl |
March 2012 |
| Mythos Methodologie, 7th meeting of the junior researcher network Stadt—Raum—Architektur, Bauhaus University Weimar (Germany) | |
| Phänomenologie, Stadt und das Abwesende | March 2012 |
| Lecture series Grenzgänger of the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies’ Graduate Studies Group, Berlin (Germany) | |
| Materialität in Bewegung | Oct 2011 |
| Konferenz Materialitäten, Mainz University (Germany) | |
| Sounds of … something. Negotiating noises and voices | Oct 2011 |
Session Resisting bodies: provoking atmospheres, 3rd International Ambiances Network Conference & Workshop Urban Design & Urban Society, Munich (Germany) | |
| Impressive landscapes. Entanglements of nature and culture | Sep 2011 |
| Final symposium of the research project Routes, Roads, and Landscapes: Aesthetic Practices en route 1750–2015, Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Norway) | |
| Von der Bedeutung zur Bewegung. Soziologie in Bewegung | June 2011 |
| Research presentation, University of Hamburg (Germany) | |
| Becoming aware. Phenomenogical engagements with things, others and the self | Jan 2011 |
| Sitzung Mittendrin statt nur dabei: Ethnographie als Methodologie für die Neue Kulturgeographie, 8. Tagung der Neuen Kulturgeographie, Erlangen (Germany) | |
| Materialisierte Zeitlichkeiten. Hasten & Rasten, Shoppen & Rumhängen | Oct 2010 |
| Ad-hoc-Gruppe Transitarchitekturen, Kongress der DGSin Frankfurt am Main (Germany) | |
| Konkrete Abwesenheit. Sozialräumliche Wechselspiele von Widerstand, Entzug und Ermöglichung | Sep 2010 |
I prefer not to be, 4. Jahrestagung des Graduiertenprogramms ProDoc: Intermediale Ästhetik. Spiel – Ritual – Performanz, Bern (Switzerland) | |
| Absence. Materiality, embodiment, resistance | Sep 2010 |
| Introduction of the double session of the same name at the annual conference of the RGS-IBG in London (UK) | |
| Begegnung, Widerstand und Abwesenheit. Herausforderungen einer offenen Feldforschung | Jan 2010 |
| Research presentation. Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (Germany) | |
| Design und soziale Kontrolle. Möbel in sozialräumlichen Konstellationen | Nov 2009 |
| Vortrag im prototyp Symposium, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst und Hochschule der Künste, Zürich (Switzerland) | |
| The route, the body & the view. Investigations into agency and perception along the Norwegian Tourist Route | Nov 2009 |
| Research seminar of the Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University (Sweden) | |
| Orten begegnen. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Erlebnis und Wahrnehmungshandeln | Sep 2009 |
| Fachsitzung Raum und Erlebnis [PDF] des Deutschen Geographentags in Wien (Austria) | |
| Route interruptus. Fatigue, erosion and other material agencies | Aug 2009 |
| Session Geographical Methodologies at the annual conference of the RGS-IBG in Manchester (UK) | |
| Living the beach: Eyes, feet and, of course, hearts | June 2009 |
| Conference ‘Twixt land and sea: The beach in literature, film and cultural theory in Berne (Switzerland) | |
| Erschöpfung und Erosion. Eine Phänomenologie der Handlungsmacht des Natürlichen | June 2009 |
| Gemeinsame Tagung der Sektion Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung und der Sektion Umweltsoziologie der DGS in Leipzig (Germany) | |
| Verortet werden – Sich verorten. Die methodologischen Herausforderungen der Orte | May 2009 |
| Treffen des Nachwuchsnetzwerks Stadt-Raum-Architektur. Soziologische und sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven in Darmstadt (Germany) | |
| Landscape, the body, and the route. The socio-materiality of road stops between erosion and fatigue | April 2009 |
| Stream Space, Mobility and Place at the annual conference of the BSA in Cardiff (UK) | |
| Automatische Irritationen. Überlegungen in Video zur Initiativentfaltung der Dinge | Nov 2008 |
| Tagung Die Sprache der Dinge – kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf die materielle Kultur der GfE in Berlin (Germany) | |
| Offene Stadtforschung. Ein Plädoyer für Ambivalenzen und (selbst-)kritische Methodologien | Nov 2008 |
| Founding meeting of the network for junior researchers in the sociology of the city, space, and architecture in Göttingen (Germany) | |
| The subtle politics of making matter: Musings on the naturalisation of architecture’s product | Sep 2008 |
| International workshop Architectures, Spaces, and Politics, Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) (UK) | |
| Encountering Places. Aesthetics of the Lived Moment and the Aesthetics of Long Durations | Aug 2008 |
| Fehn Symposium in Hamar (Norway) | |
| Space, materiality, perception. The process of envelopment | April 2008 |
| Session Thinking Geography. Annual meeting of the AAG in Boston (USA) | |
| Teaching | |
| Graduate level seminar on participant observation and visual methods, TU Darmstadt | Summer 2010 |
| accompanying field studies, teaching, student counseling | |
| Post-graduate workshop Spatial Research, Advanced Performance Training apt, Antwerp | Summer 2009 |
| accompanying field studies, teaching, student counseling | |
| Graduate level seminar on materiality and perception, TU Darmstadt | Summer 2007 |
| accompanying field studies, teaching, student counseling | |
| Graduate level practical seminar on urban ethnography, TU Darmstadt | Summer 2005 |
| accompanying field studies, teaching, student counseling | |
| Undergraduate level classes on the history of sociology, TU Darmstadt | Winter 2003/04, 04/05, 06/07 |
| teaching, student counseling | |
| Graduate Assistant, Department of Sociology, IU Bloomington | Spring 2000 |
| assistant and tutor for introduction to sociology class | |
| Collaborations with Artists | |
| Theaterminiatur | 2008 |
| contributed text passages for the performance/installation of Alexander Schellow and David Weber-Krebs at Sophiensäle Berlin | |
| Abwehr | 2007 |
| discussion participant & photographic documentation of the event organized by Shahram Entekhabi and Svenja Moor at the Kunstfabrik Berlin | |
| Mobiles Wohnen | 2005 |
| urbanist/sociological counselor for the performance/installation project of Hannah Groninger at X-WOHNUNGEN SUBURBS 2005 in Berlin | |
| Language Skills | |
| German: mother tongue | Norwegian: advanced |
| English: fluent | French: intermediate |
Contact me
If you have any feedback regarding these pages (both content and html-wise) feel free to contact me. If you have any questions regarding my work, literature etc. just e-mail me. My address is: lars.frers@fu-berlin.de. I’ll enjoy reading and answering your mail!