For over fifty years, we have known that fossil lifestyles cannot continue. Yet the global shift toward decarbonization is not merely a technological substitution of oil with lithium, coal with hydrogen, combustion engines with batteries. It is a profound civilizational transition, a new Sattelzeit in the sense of Reinhart Koselleck, reshaping how societies imagine, produce, circulate, and live with raw materials.

The Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) „Rohstoffwelten – Kulturen im Umbruch“ takes this epochal transformation as its starting point. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR), the KHK is conceived as an international and interdisciplinary research center dedicated to the cultural, political, and social dimensions of global material transformations.

We explore how raw materials become embedded in social orders, political regimes, everyday practices, and cultural imaginaries, and how these entanglements shape the possibilities of a post-fossil future.

Our Core Question

How can the transition to post-fossil lifeworlds succeed?

Our Premise

Transformation will only work if it engages with the meanings, emotions, institutions, and power relations that structure existing material cultures. Climate policy alone is not enough. What is required is a deeper understanding of:

• Carbon Culture – the persistence and global resurgence of fossil imaginaries
• Great Transformation – the promises and narratives of green modernization
• Dark Sides – inequalities, conflicts, extraction pressures, and unintended consequences
• Horizons – alternative futures, new social models, and “slow hope”

These four guiding concepts structure our annual research themes.

Research Structure

The Kolleg works across three interconnected profile areas:

• Raw Material Cultures (led by Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez)
• Raw Material Practices (led by Prof. Dr. Kristina Dietz)
• Raw Material Regimes (led by Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt)
• An integrated field of Critique|Reflection (led by Prof. Dr. Philip Hogh) ensures methodological innovation and genuine interdisciplinarity.

Each year, up to 10 international Fellows collaborate with our team to investigate one of the thematic focal points. The first funding phase focuses on energy and the energy transition, followed by research on food and agricultural regimes, and on the material transformations

Academic Leadership & Collaboration

The KHK brings together four complementary fields of expertise. Together, these perspectives create a uniquely interdisciplinary environment for rethinking the cultural, political, and ethical foundations of raw material worlds in transition.

Liliana Gómez – Art and Society
Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez explores the aesthetic, cultural, and symbolic dimensions of material worlds, examining how artistic practices, public and legal cultures shape imaginaries of transformation. Her research engages contemporary arts, cultures and media, in particular global modernization, urban and visual cultures, and aesthetic ecologies.

Hans-Jürgen Burchardt – International and Inter-Societal Relations
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt focuses on North–South relations, environmental, labor and social regimes in comparative perspective, democracy and wealth inequality, as well as sustainability and development theory and policy. He analyzes global inequalities, rent-based development, and inter-societal power structures providing a comparative political economy lens on shifting raw material regimes.

Philip Hogh – Practical Philosophy
Prof. Dr. Philip Hogh contributes a critical philosophical perspective. His work advances critical theory as an interdisciplinary materialism, with particular focus on climate ethics, philosophical anthropology, and the philosophy of history.

Kristina Dietz – International Relations with a Focus on Latin America
Prof. Dr. Kristina Dietz brings expertise in international environmental, climate, energy, and raw material politics, political ecology and socio-ecological transformation, democracy and social movements, global inequalities, and critical agrarian studies.

Research Meets Society

KHK “Rohstoffwelten” connects the humanities and social sciences at the University of Kassel with the

• Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos (CELA),
• Kassel Institute for Sustainability,
• the documenta Institut.

A dedicated Transfer|Forum fosters dialogue with regional stakeholders, civil society, schools, and artistic communities. In cooperation with the SDG+ Lab (funded under the BMFTR program Innovative Hochschule), we develop formats such as CitizenLabs, public debates, artist talks, and experimental knowledge exchange.

We see Fellows not only as researchers, but as co-creators of new forms of dialogue between scholarship and society.

Fellowships

We offer:

• A vibrant international and interdisciplinary research environment
• Excellent academic infrastructure
• Competitive fellowship conditions
• Active support in knowledge transfer and publication strategies
• The opportunity to shape thematic emphases and formats

We invite outstanding scholars from the humanities and social sciences — at postdoctoral and senior level — to join us in Kassel and contribute to this collective effort of rethinking the material foundations of modern societies.

The current Call for Applications for Fellows is open.

Apply Now!

Cooperation

In addition to our core fellowship program, we have established a collaboration with the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Studies (HIAS) and offer an individual joint KHK/HIAS fellowship in Hamburg and Kassel.

The current Call for Applications for the individual KHK/HIAS fellowship is open.

Apply Now!