Geographical Society of Bonn

The path to greater sustainability is a complex process that poses major challenges to actors at the global and local levels. The subject of geography deals with the ecological, economic as well as the social conditions of more sustainability. With the lecture series of the Bonn Geographical Society, we were able to create a place in the past where students from the region could gain insight into current geographical research. However, we are convinced that there are already projects, initiatives and working groups at schools in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg Kreis that are committed to greater sustainability - locally or globally. With the Sustainability Award, we want to start precisely here and make commitment to sustainable development visible and promote it. As the Geographical Society, we want to create a platform for exchange on a local level. We want to honor the commitment of such initiatives that work in a local, regional or global context to shape a sustainable future.

Who?

Working groups, projects or initiatives at schools in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg Kreis

Application via the respective teachers

What?

Different focal points are possible (e.g. climate change, energy, upgrading of open spaces, mobility, nutrition or justice)

Assignment to one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations

How?

Application form
Standardized project description
Short video (max. 2 minutes)
Send all application materials to: bgg@geographie.uni-bonn.de

When?

Application deadline: 01.05.2022
Award ceremony on 25.05.2022 in the Alfred-Philippson lecture hall of the Department of Geography University of Bonn with supporting program

Invitation to the lectures in the winter semester 2022/2023
"Precarious Housing and Homelessness"

The lectures of the series will take place in presence in the Alfred Philippson Lecture Hall of the Department of Geography University of Bonn.

For members of the Geographical Society of Bonn, we also offer digital participation via Zoom this semester. For this we ask for a short message by email, we will then send you the access data.

Wednesday, 26.10.2022, 6 p.m. c.t.

Precarious housing - direct displacement from a subject perspective 

Dr. Miriam Meuth, Lucerne

The letter from the housing administration has arrived, or you know from neighbors that erbald is in your own mailbox. With the reason that the entire house is to be renovated or demolished, the letter announces the imminent termination of the tenancy or changes the tenancy into a temporary one. Sooner or later, one is forced to move out of the apartment; for many tenants, this also represents a pressure to leave the neighborhood in order to find a new apartment that is affordable for them. The lecture focuses on the perspectives and the subjective experience of the affected tenants as well as their respective forms and strategies of dealing with a loss of housing generated in this way. The lecture is based on a qualitative study of displacement from a subject perspective, which is able to show both the individual, biographical and life-course-differentiated perceptions and experiences, as well as the hidden strategies of yield-oriented, institutional investors and housing managers, who pursue the goal of liberating buildings without resistance from tenants. The lecture will provide insights into a central topic of precarious housing, the direct displacement of tenants in the context of structural upgrading and inward densification. (The lecture will be held in German.)

Wednesday, 23.11.2022, 6 p.m. c.t.

Exploitation, Decay, Displacement: Legal and Urban Geographies of Responsibility(s) for Housing 

Prof. Dr. Hanna Hilbrandt, Zurich

In the course of a decade-long cycle of speculative debt, disinvestment, andbuilding decay, the city of Dortmund evacuated the Hannibal II housing complex in 2017. While 753 tenants lost their homes without notice, the process ended for the owner without major financial damage or further award of debt. These dynamics of housing speculation and displacement exemplify the current, globalPrecarization of renting and raise pressing questions about the responsibility of homeownership: How is such irresponsibility legally, practically, and socially organized? Andhow can a different concept of responsibility be conceived? The social obligation for home ownership is legally established in many places, in Germany, for example, in Article 14.2 of the Basic Law, according to which "property obligates." However, given the obligations of listed housing companies to their shareholders and the power differences between the parties involved, this responsibility can hardly be harnessed in the everyday life of housing authorities and renters. In the lecture, I show how the owner of the Hannibal was able to systematically negate her responsibility for the building complex or pass it on to the city and the tenants. In addition, with the help of feminist and decolonial debates in geography, I ask how a concept of responsibility for housing that focuses on structural injustice can be radically rethought. (The lecture will be held in German.)

Wednesday 18.01.2022, 6 pm c.t.

Visual Geographies of Homelessness and Homelessness 

Dr. Katharina Schmidt, Hamburg

Homelessness describes a global-urban relationship. This is often discussed along the division between visibility and invisibility. Mostly, the focus is on a view from the outside on homelessness as the so-called most visible phenomenon of urban poverty. The lecture will deal with historical and current as well as local and global perspectives on homelessness in urban contexts. From an intersectional perspective, the role of photography, but also that of cartography in the production of visible and invisible geographies of homelessness will be presented. Subsequently, decidedly photographic views as well as embodied cartographies of people in situations of homelessness will be presented and discussed. The lecture invites to question one's own views, perspectives and habits of seeing in the context of urban homelessness. (The lecture will be held in German.)