News

On Wednesday, 29 April 2026, the transSCAPE team cordially invites all members of the public to the eighth Town Hall Meeting. This open format brings together stakeholders from the the academic, urban, and cultural communities to actively shape the future of Magdeburg's Science Port.

The eighth Town Hall Meeting will provide an insight into key findings: from the refined interim use concept, through engagement formats such as the ‘Kulturbeete’ and the ‘Wissensparcours’, to artistic perspectives, co-creative formats and new approaches such as the student agency.

The event starts at 4 p.m. at the Campus Welcome Center (building 01, lecture hall 6) of the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Universitätsplatz 2, 39106 Magdeburg). At 6 p.m., the Town Hall Meeting finishes with an opening of the exhibition ‘A Journey Through Medical History’. All interested parties are invited to join for an open discussion to learn about the latest research and other initiatives and workshops within the transPORT MedTech ecosystem. Registration is requested.

As part of the project module in the Cultural Engineering programme, the interdisciplinary student conference “Situated (Dis)Affiliation? The Politics of Belonging and Alienation in Space and Place” will take place on the FHW campus from 17 to 18 April 2026. It will explore which affective and power-related factors shape our experiences of space and place – and why. The event comprises 17 presentations and begins on Friday, 17 April 2026 at 10 am in Building 44 / Lecture Hall 6. Anyone interested is warmly invited to attend the event or individual presentations without prior registration. The conference programme can be found here. 

Conference Details

Organisers: Ella Keim, Jasper Bettin, und Junia Mosel unter

Date: 17 and 18 April 2026, 10–17hrs

Venue: OVGU Building 44 (Lecture Hall 6), Zschokkestraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg

Programme: Programme Situated (Dis)Affiliation

During the 2026 summer term, the Temporary Object Laboratory (TOL) in Building 5 at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg will be open on Tuesdays from 11:00 to 16:00. Following on from the TOLs on pain and stress, this edition focuses on the third S: sleep. As part of an interdisciplinary collaboration, research will be conducted on, amongst other things, EEG devices from the Historical Medical Technology Collection. From 11:00 to 13:00, the seminar "Culture|Techniques of the Sleep Laboratory", integrated into the TOL, will take place, during which some devices from the collection will be (re)commissioned and collection objects examined for their connections to current practices in sleep optimisation. All interested parties are warmly invited to drop by!
The TOL's findings on the topic of sleep will be presented at the collection conference, which is being organised by the 3ioS research team in Magdeburg from 10 to 12 September. The Sleep Salon will also take place as part of this event; further details will follow.

On Wednesday, 11 February 2026, the transSCAPE team cordially invites all membery of the public to the sixth Town Hall Meeting. This open format brings together stakeholders from the the academic, urban, and cultural communities to actively shape the future of Magdeburg's Science Port.

The Town Hall Meeting 2026+ aims to bring together two levels with the participants: local cultural perspectives and the tourist development of the area in the Science Port – and to develop these ideas further together.

The event starts at 5 p.m. at the Elbwerk, near Daniel's restaurant (Werner-Heisenberg-Straße 1, 39106 Magdeburg). The focus will be on the 2026 summer cultural programme, which should be designed directly from the harbour with ideas, projects and experiences from the urban community. At the same time, the growing tourist and strategic importance of the Science Port for Saxony-Anhalt will be discussed in an international context. Registration is requested.

Since 2017, the Inklings-Gesellschaft für Literatur und Ästhetik e.V. (Inklings Society for Literature and Aesthetics) has been publishing a newsletter in irregular cycles, which is dedicated to the review of fantastic primary texts. The Inklings Society was founded in 1983 and is primarily dedicated to the study and dissemination of the works of the Inklings, a group of authors around J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton, but also to the analysis of the fantastic in literature, film and art in general.

From 2022 onwrds, the newsletter will be edited by Marthe-Siobhán Hecke, M.A., M.Ed. (University of Bonn), and Carsten Kullmann, M.A. (Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg), offerering a platform for the review of newly published primary texts (e.g. literature, film, series, etc.) that belong to a genre of the fantastic (e.g. fantasy, science fiction, horror, Gothic, dystopia). The editors are currently looking for student reviewers who would like to become part of the editorial team and contribute (academic) reviews of such primary texts for the newsletter. The reviews can be written in German or English. Review copies of literary works will be provided if possible. If you are interested, please contact Carsten Kullmann (). An overview of past newsletter issues can be found here.