New DFG Research Unit “Energy Entanglements. Actors, Spaces and Narratives in Eastern Europe”

The DFG Research Unit Energy Entanglements. Actors, Spaces, and Narratives in Eastern Europe began its work on October 1, 2026. In the context of this group, researchers from Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Centre Marc Bloch, and the ZfL jointly investigate the following questions: In what ways are the extraction and circulation of energy intertwined with the reconfiguration of resource spaces? What formal and informal networks shape energy environments, and how do human and non-human actors influence them? Which concepts, topoi, and ideas shape discourses surrounding energy? To explore these complex issues, the interdisciplinary group works across and between the disciplinary boundaries of literary and cultural studies, political science, historiography, sociology, and economic sciences.

In the ZfL subproject Resources of the Future: Energy Sources and Science Elites in Late and Post-Soviet Science Fiction and Popular Scientific Publications, slavist and historian Matthias Schwartz and literary scholar and communication designer Marika Bakhtadze analyze how science fiction literature and popular science journalism in the late Soviet Union and during the first two post-Soviet decades depict the future extraction of existing and yet-to-be-discovered energy resources as a solution to sociopolitical, ecological, and social issues.