News

Our Rotterdam-researcher Vincent Baptist has published a new article on „Hedonism and Heterotopia“ and different „Pathways for Researching Legacies of Entertainment Culture in Port Cities“. Please have a look at the full article in PORTUSPlus!

In late October 2020, we normally would have been in Barcelona to meet up for our third workshop and explore that amazing city. Sadly, this was not possible due to the Covid-19-pandemic. We are not allowed to travel and Barcelona is in a serious crisis. Having an academic get-together with presentations, group discussions, museum visits and urban hikes is just unthinkable at the moment.

But we are trying to move on anyway and get on with our research and met up digitally instead. On October 29, we had a great full-day digital workshop, perfectly hosted and managed by our Catalan colleagues. We made good progress on the conceptual frame of the Pleasurescapes-project and its multiple outcomes. Thanks to the whole team for joining and contributing and hopefully see you again soon! In person or on the screen!

We are sincerly struck by the shattering effects the Covid-19 pandemic has on our world and are sending out our compassion to everyone in need. Our project team has been affected quite differently by the crisis, since we are spread over the four European countries of Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Spain, and every government has been launching different measures.

Working and living conditions in Spain have been particularly hard in the past months due to the complete curfew. In other countries restricted access to archives and libraries complicated our research work severely. We acknowledge the current impossibility of organizing personal meetings, but pity the lack of personal discussion and creative analogue momentum. Scientific conferences like the German Historikertag or the Annual Conference of the European Association of Urban History, where we had been accepted to present papers, have been postponed to 2021, which forced us to reorganize our publication plans.

However, we are deeply grateful that we were still able to host our 2nd workshop shortly before the crisis: Our meeting in Rotterdam in early February 2020 was an important milestone throughout the whole project, set key markers for our current research agenda and created beautiful memories of three terrific days in this exciting port city for all of us.

From 5 – 7 February 2020, the Pleasurescapes-team met at Erasmus University Rotterdam and at the Museum Rotterdam. We discussed methodological questions and individual researchers presented their case studies. Special highlights were the keynote by Montserrat Pareja-Eastaway (University of Barcelona) and the discussion about mapping strategies with Carola Hein (Delft University). Our pre-conference on February 6th for the Pleasurescapes-session at the EAUH 15th International Conference on Urban History in Antwerp was a big success as well and we thank everyone who contributed with their papers. Looking forward to the further exchange with the new network! Find the programme to the pre-conference here.

We’re proud to have been accepted for a session at the 15th International Conference on Urban History “Cities in Motion” in Antwerp from 2 to 5 September 2020, organized by the European Association for Urban History (EAUH). On 6 February 2020, there will be a public pre-conference for this session at Erasmus University Rotterdam.