CALLING ALL UNDERGRADUATES WITH AN INTEREST IN GERMAN STUDIES!

The next Undergraduate Conference in German Studies will be held on 1-2 March 2024, and all German Studies undergraduates and sixth form students of German are welcome.

The Committee invites current GCSE and A-Level students, as well as teachers, with an interest in German and the German-speaking world to register for the conference. There will be talks, workshops and academic exchange led by current undergraduate students from across the UK, guest speakers and members of the German Section at the Conference.

From medieval history to projections of the future, our perception of places, people and world events exists within a complex network of facts and fictions. The binary opposition of fact and fiction is often blurred in instances of expectation vs. reality, accounts and reports or technological interpretation of human experiences. Interrogating such instances and what causes them can help us understand more about the world we perceive. How are knowledge, art, and ideas disseminated to us? By what means and by whom (or what) can these narratives be co-opted, manipulated or altered, and to what effect? In responding to these lines of enquiry, speakers will consider the following areas:

• Art, literature, film, photography and other cultural media from all time periods in the German-speaking world
• Memory studies (e.g. debates about remembering National Socialism; the legacy of the GDR)
• News, journalism and similar media
• History and politics (e.g. democracy in Germany; migration)
• Linguistics
• AI and technology, for example in the debate around ‘digitalisation’

We will be joined in our discussions by current undergraduates from across the UK. The keynote will be given by Tonio Schachinger, novelist and winner of the ‘Deutscher Buchpreis’ 2023 for his work Echtzeitalter. We expect the keynote event to take place at 5pm on 1 March. We will also be joined by Kathrin Wesolowski and Thomas Sparrow from the Deutsche Welle Fact Checking Team, who will offer workshops in German and English on disinformation and fake news in the media today. Further details about speakers and the programme will be distributed to registered participants at the start of February once registration closes. We expect the Conference to run 13:00-19:00 on 1 March and 09:30-17:00 on 2 March. These indications are subject to change.

Free refreshments, including a lunch, will be available for all attendees during the conference. Virtual participation for audience members (but not speakers) will be possible; the Conference will, however, be a fully accessible event. We are looking forward to hearing your insights and seeing you at the conference at the start of March! If you have any questions, please contact the Conference Committee at CUCGS@mmll.cam.ac.uk.

Photograph taken at 2020 conference on the theme of ‘Invention and Innovation’.