Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies

The Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at Heidelberg University focuses on the question of how catastrophes and end-time scenarios affect societies, individuals and environments. The aim is to describe past and present system upheavals and collapses in a differentiated way on the basis of a transdisciplinary research approach and to distinguish between them. The reactions to apocalyptic scenarios as well as future designs for the time after the catastrophe are also to be understood, analysed and questioned against the background of their respective historical and cultural frameworks.

CAPAS Fellows are the core of the Centre's academic research. CAPAS awards about ten fellowships each year to international researchers from a variety of academic disciplines, for the conduct of collaborative research projects on theoretical and practical dimensions of the end of the world and what comes after. The time at CAPAS offers each Fellow a unique opportunity to engage in free, transdisciplinary discussions outside the day-to-day commitments of academia.

We have identified three integrated research areas for CAPAS that allow us to study apocalypses and post-apocalypses in a systematic way: An Archive of Imaginaries of the Apocalypse, Historical Experiences of Apocalypse and Postapocalypse, and Apocalypses of the Present.

The outreach activities of CAPAS aim to initiate and transform patterns of thought and action. Our way of disseminating knowledge and information aims to communicate with different publics and to enable society to reflect on scientific topics.