Creating counter-universities became a widespread practice during the last third of the twentieth century. This research project focuses on the declaration of such »alternative« spaces of learning and research in the context of social movements and politically engaged art. It aims to historicize the proclamation of counter-universities as an imaginative practice oscillating between utopian draft and fictitious institution that established spaces where prefigurative politics could be experienced. The repertoires of action that evolved in this context are still available to express policies of knowledge and to articulate suggestions for social and educational reform. The project’s diachronic approach connects the histories of science and knowledge, education, democracy, and social movements.

Susanne Schregel is particularly interested in the history of social movements and political protest, the history of spatial-political interrelations, and the intersections between social history, political history, and the histories of science and knowledge. Since receiving her Ph.D. at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2010, she has worked at several universities and has held fellowships at numerous research institutes in Germany and abroad, among them the Research Unit for the History of Education at the Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg; the Department of History at the University of Cologne; IKKM Weimar (»Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie«); the German Historical Institute London; the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh (funded by the EURIAS Program); »Historisches Kolleg«, Munich; and the Humboldt Foundation (Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship, 2023/24).