course-schedule

Debatten in den Sozialwissenschaften (PhD) (Seminar)

Termin:
Einzeltermin | Mo, 02.02.2026, 12:00 - Do, 05.02.2026, 18:00 | C 12.001 Seminarraum | Das Seminar findet als Blockseminar statt.

Inhalt: Das Seminar steht allen Promovierenden der Leuphana offen. Es widmet sich zentralen Debatten der Sozialwissenschaften und diskutiert ihre Relevanz für heutige Forschung. Es werden Schwerpunkte auf den Positivismusstreit, den Historikerstreit und auf die Kontroverse um eine mögliche Politisierung der Sozialwissenschaften unter dem Begriff einer transformativen Wissenschaft gelegt; Anregungen und Änderungen sind aber willkommen. Die Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer werden mit diesen akademischen Auseinandersetzungen vertraut gemacht und dazu eingeladen, ihre jeweiligen Forschungsprojekte konzeptionell, methodisch und paradigmatisch zu reflektieren. In welcher Tradition stehen ihre je eigenen Forschungsfagen? Wie zeigt sich hier das eigene Wissenschaftsverständnis? Wie lassen sich gesellschaftliche Phänomene erforschen? Wie steht es um die Relevanz des eigenen Projekts – oder sind Nützlichkeitserwägungen gänzlich abzulehnen?

Management and Organization Theories (PhD) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Elke Schüßler

Inhalt: The course exposes students to foundational and current management and organization theories. The topics of this course are organized along key themes and challenges of organizational life, such as formal vs informal organizing, power and politics in organizations or changing institutional demands. Initially, traditional and more recent perspectives on organizations and organizing are introduced. Finally, the course will also attend to moral and ethical issues of organizing and digital and algorithmic organizational forms and practices.

Space, affect and atmosphere in organized life (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Inhalt: The course takes place as a workshop organized within the framework of the European Haniel Program on Entrepreneurship and the Humanities, organized in conjunction with Haniel Foundation and Curtius Foundation, and will take place in St.Gallen, Switzerland, from April 7th to April 10th 2026, hosted by the University of St.Gallen. The course is coordinated and taught by Chris Steyaert (University of St.Gallen) and Timon Beyes (Leuphana University Lüneburg), together with Monica Calcagno (Ca' Foscari University Venicer) and Martin Parker and Robin Holt (University of Bristol ). The course is open for doctoral students from each of the participating universities (Venice, Bristol, Lüneburg and St.Gallen). There is a maximum number of 20 participants. Thanks to the Haniel Foundation, there is no course fee, and we can offer free accommodation and an evening meal in St.Gallen. Participants are asked to organize their own transport. Application deadline in Lüneburg is October 31st 2025. Applicants will be chosen on the basis of a CV and a motivation letter also including a short reflection on ‘Space, atmosphere and affect in organized life’ (max. 2 pages). Please send your application to haniel_esa@leuphana.de. Content Social theory and the study of social organization (and its subsets of management and entrepreneurship theories) have been swept along by the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in the last decades. Loosely connected to adjacent movements of thought (e.g., affect theory, neo-materialism), there now is a robust body of research inquiring into the sites of organization, their spatial power relations, their spatial multiplicity, their affective charge and atmospheric performativity. Addressing these concerns entails reconsidering the methods and performativity of organizational inquiry, from mappings to atmospheric walks, from drawing to videography, from topological analysis to a spatial poetics. This course invites PhD students working with, or interested in, the spatiality of organized life. Participants are asked to engage with current strands of spatial theorizing, to discuss spatial organization at work in different social spheres, and to reflect on how these ‘spatial attunements’ affect our understanding of organization, management and entrepreneurship – not least as concerns the participants’ own dissertation projects and empirical materials. In particular (but not exclusively so), this PhD workshop is dedicated to exploring and thinking the interplay of space, affect and atmosphere. ‘Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and “felt the atmosphere”?’, Teresa Brennan has asked at the very beginning of her study of The Transmission of Affect. Organizational spatialities are invariably ‘spaces with a mood’ (Gernot Böhme). Affect, we might claim, is organizational in being spatial and spatialized; and everyday spaces of organizing and being-organized are loaded with affect, hence atmospheric. How do such affective and atmospheric ‘spacings’ enable, and play out in, organized life? How do they become organizational forces, how do they shape everyday life? How are they managed, controlled and modulated, how are they resisted, subverted and transformed? As Lauren Berlant has argued, moreover, it is atmospheric disturbances that enable a critical attunement, a feeling-and-becoming-critical, not least as scholars. In times of the highly engineered spatialiaties and atmospheres of organized life (in business and economics just as much as in politics, culture, entertainment and everyday urban life) and their affective and spatialized (and partly violent) in- and exclusions, and in times of the atmospheric breakdowns wrought by climate change, the PhD workshop seeks to map and reconsider the ambivalence (and the struggles around) space, affect and atmosphere as forces of organization. Structure The workshop begins with an opening meal on Tuesday, April 7th, and ends on Friday, April 10th, at 2pm. Accommodation will be offered from Tuesday to Friday. The basis of the course will be the participants’ essays. Convenors and invited speakers will add input on their experience in spatial studies of social organization. The course will also be situated in St.Gallen and will have various elements that allow us to explore everyday spatialities, affects and atmospheres. Therefore, it will take the form of a combination of mini lectures, break-out sessions and exercises, fieldwork excursions and student presentations and commentary. Indicative readings Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(2), 77-81. Beyes, T., & Holt, R. (2020). The Topographical Imagination: Space and organization theory. Organization Theory, 1(2). Beyes, T., & Steyaert, C. (2011). Spacing organization: non-representational theory and performing organizational space. Organization, 19(1), 45-61. Beyes, T., & Steyaert, C. (2013). Strangely Familiar: The Uncanny and Unsiting Organizational Analysis. Organization Studies, 34(10), 1445-1465. Beyes, T., & Steyaert, C. (2020). Unsettling bodies of knowledge: Walking as a pedagogy of affect. Management Learning, 52(2), 224-242. Böhme, G. (2017). Atmospheric architectures: The aesthetics of felt spaces. London: Bloomsbury. Brennan, T. (2004). The transmission of affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Furuhata, Y. (2022). Climatic media: Transpacific experiments in atmospheric control. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jørgensen, L. and Beyes, T. (2023). Organizing Half-Things: Knowing, Theorizing and Studying Atmospheres. Organization Theory, 4(4). Leclair, M. (2022). The Atmospherics of Creativity: Affective and spatial materiality in a designer’s studio. Organization Studies, 44(5), 807-829. Leff, J. R. (2021.) Expanding feminist affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 41. Michels, C. & Steyaert, C. (2017). By accident and by design: Composing affective atmospheres in an urban art intervention. Organization, 19(1), 43-59. Stephenson, K. A., Kuismin, A., Putnam, L. L., & Sivunen, A. (2020). Process studies of organizational space. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2), 797-827. Stewart, K. (2011.) Atmospheric attunements. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(3), 445-453. Steyaert, C. (2010). Queering Space: Heterotopic Life in Derek Jarman's Garden. Gender, Work & Organization, 17: 45-68. Wall, I. rua. (2019). Policing Atmospheres: Crowds, Protest and ‘Atmotechnics’. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4), 143-162.

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: New Trends in Algorithms for Identification and Monitoring (PhD) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Paolo Mercorelli

Inhalt: The course is structured in three parts: - Kalman Filters: the linear case, the nonlinear case (extended and augmented Kalman filters), cascaded Kalman Filters, Dual Kalman Filters - Recursive Least Squares Methods System Identification - Introduction to Wavelets packets: Data Analysis and Reconciliation The topics mentioned above are developed using Matlab/Simulik directly in the Computers Room together with the teacher.

Course Schedule

Lehrveranstaltungen

Debatten in den Sozialwissenschaften (PhD) (Seminar)

Management and Organization Theories (PhD) (Seminar)

Space, affect and atmosphere in organized life (Seminar)

Think Mathematically, Act Algorithmically: New Trends in Algorithms for Identification and Monitoring (PhD) (Seminar)