Oxford – UdK Berlin Seed Funding for Creative Collaborations
Oxford – UdK Berlin Partnership in Arts and Humanities
Call for Proposals - Seedfunding for Creative Collaborations
The University of Oxford and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) invite their researchers, artists and designers to participate in the Oxford-UdK Berlin Partnership in the Arts and Humanities. The initiative aims to strengthen the ties between the two institutions by facilitating interdisciplinary research projects which create synergies between artistic and academic disciplines. This is the fourth Oxford-UdK seedfunding call.
Deadline for applications. 15 March 2025.
Activity funded
The universities are particularly interested in projects that could lead to larger grant applications to other funders.
Eligible projects will run between 1 January 2025 and 31 October 2025, with activities taking place in either Berlin or Oxford, or in both (e.g. travel for first meetings, workshops, materials, student assistants, publications or presentations at the University of Oxford or at UdK Berlin).
Amount available: up to €7,500 per project.
The funding should be divided evenly across both universities (up to €3,750 per institution).
The overall funding pot available this year is €40,000.
For participants from UdK Berlin, there are regulatory requirements and further information regarding funding and budgets on the UdK website (German language only).
Eligibility
Proposals require at least one project leader from UdK Berlin and one from the University of Oxford..
Eligibility University of Oxford:
-
a salaried faculty member or equivalent at post-doctoral level
Eligibility UdK Berlin:
-
professors
-
mid-level faculty staff (artistic staff, research assistants) in tandem with a professor
Participants from other institutions are welcome but not required. They will be required to cover their own costs.
How to apply
Proposals should be sent by email to the following addresses:
UdK Berlin: Marianne Karthäuser / Anne Renner, seedfunding.oxford@udk-berlin.de
University of Oxford: Christine Gerrard, christine.gerrard@lmh.ox.ac.uk and torch@humanities.ox.ac.uk
Please feel free to reach out to the above contacts with any queries about the scheme or if you are looking for suggestions for project partners at the other university.
Please note: All funded projects must submit a final report (maximum 3 pages) and a report on expenditure of funds upon project completion.
Some previous projects
Berlin-Oxford Liedfest
A project led by Axel Bauni and Caitlin Hulcup at UdK Berlin and Stefano Evangelista and Philip Bullock at Oxford draws musical inspiration from the history and cultural identity of Berlin, focusing on two key moments in the city’s evolving cultural history: the Weimar Republic and the Jewish Enlightenment. It explores the relationship between urban space, creativity, national identity, and cosmopolitanism, and pays particular attention to questions of gender and sexuality. Building on work surrounding the historical experience of British Writers in Berlin, an exhibition of five song recitals and two Song Connection films will be presented at the Berlin-Oxford LiedFest between 19 and 21 November 2021.
Start | LiedFest Berlin – Oxford
Communicating Vaccination
Joining forces to bridge the fields of graphic design, medical history, and health communication, Constanze Hein, graphic design lecturer at UdK Berlin, and Sally Frampton, medical historian at Oxford, will set out to find visual forms of communicating about vaccines. Their project will inspire a new course for Visual Communications students at UdK. The project aims to generate new interdisciplinary research and resources, including a student led website, printed material, and academic outputs. It will engage with an audience of students, educators and the general public to create a discussion around vaccination and communication.
https://communicating-vaccination.udk-berlin.de/
The Library and the Archive
Daria Martin, Oxford, and Kathrin Peters, Berlin: We investigate whether and how the colonial and migration histories of UK and Germany have been inscribed in the two art schools. To do so, we turn to the Library of the Ruskin School of Art and the Archive of the University of the Arts Berlin. We are interested in the representation of BPoC, Black Art and postmigrant perspective in the library and the archive of both art schools – or the fact that they are not represented. How can an omission be located in the archive? How do the sites and findings differ? The projects will involve students from both institutions. In on-site workshops in Berlin and Oxford we explore the archives to lay ground for an artistic and experimental research project into the past and present of our art schools.
https://visuellekultur.udk-berlin.de/forschung/workshop-traversing-the-archive
Mobile Media Practices in the Asylum Application Process
David Lowis, Johanna Kirschbauer, and Maren Hartmann (UdK Berlin) and Rachael Kiddey and Derya Özkul (Oxford) will be looking at mobile media practices in the asylum application process. With the increased prevalence and importance of digital access and the internet in everyday life, including in many if not most interactions with authorities, displaced people are facing particular difficulties when it comes to claiming asylum. Often, the only internet enabled device they can access is a mobile phone, with application processes often not tailored to mobile devices. This project will aim to better understand the mobile and digital practices of displaced people, particularly relating to the asylum application process. The initial research will be undertaken with Berlin based organizations that provide support for asylum seekers and displaced people more broadly.
MOMAP Project – MOWO-Projekt (homeless.media)
Sound of Contagion
Chelsea Haith (Oxford) and Wenzel Mehnert (UdK Berlin) will continue a project begun during 2020 on the Sound of Contagion. It comprises forms of music, a short story, podcast episodes and algorithm outputs in response to the Covid pandemic. The project will take the existing collaboration further with a series of workshops for graduate students in Berlin, exploring, with the use of AI (artificial intelligence), questions of authorship, applied humanities and the possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary methodologies.
https://www.soundofcontagion.com/
More-than-Human Perspectives
Prof. Nina Fischer, Lilli Kuschel (UdK Berlin), Prof. Nayanika Mathur, and Dr Amanda Power (Oxford) will develop further a project that was begun during the 2020 interactions between Oxford and UdK Berlin, which will seek to explore “more-than-human” perspectives, moving away from anthropocentric worldviews rooted in traditional notions of the human as a generic masculine heterosexual being. The project will focus on a multidisciplinary approach to re-understanding current problems such as climate change and mass extinction, exploring the shifts in vision of the past, present and future of a planet in crisis from the perspective of animals and plants, and how it might be possible to represent these perspectives, through artistic means, to a broader audience.
Live-Video and Website
Living a Good Life with Bread
Charles Spence (Oxford) and Maciej Chmara (UdK Berlin) will be examining the role of the humble loaf of bread in many different aspects of our lives, from its centrality in terms of our subsistence and sustenance to its cultural values. This will be approached through an analysis of the production and consumption of a loaf of sourdough bread, and will encompass many sensory aspects such as smell, touch, sight, sound and taste, with the aim of producing a walk-in installation for the public, both in Berlin and in the UK. The project will aim to combine a multisensory design approach with a new view of physical objects and the perception of space and object together with the role of kitchen design, cuisine and gastronomy, and the influence of cultural technique of cooking on our lives.
Data protection
Please click here to read our Privacy Notice:
