I’ve just got back from two days at the University of Gießen. I had been invited to give a lecture as part of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture‘s anniversary series, and spoke on the topic of ‘Terrain: The Materiality of Territory’. While this connects to some lectures I’ve given before, this was almost all new material and will hopefully be the basis for a forthcoming publication. I’ll be giving versions of this talk in Durham, London, Oslo and Stockholm in 2017 (details of future talks here), so I won’t yet share a recording, but will likely do so at some future point.

While I was there I also led a ‘masterclass’ with PhD and MA researchers on ‘Volume, Nature, Fluid – Thinking the Materiality of Political Spaces’ – in which we read pieces by me, Derek Gregory and Phil Steinberg and Kimberley Peters. This led to a wide-ranging discussion about how these themes featured in a range of very interesting research projects. And finally, there was a roundtable discussion on ‘Spatializing Security and Terror’ with Bernd Belina (Frankfurt), Peter Haslinger (Marburg), and Andreas Langenohl (Gießen).

A busy, but enjoyable and thought-provoking two days. My thanks to Jens Kugele, Amina Nolte and Melanie Hartmann and their colleagues for the invitation and organization.