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Design Research
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Gestaltung OnWater

On Water… from the Sea. On Marine Habitats, Care, and Threatened Ecosystems

Saturday, November 7 | 4–6:30 PM | Humboldt Labor | As Part of Berlin Science Week What can coral skeletons reveal about the history of the oceans? How can we develop new ways of living alongside marine organisms? And how...
OnWater Interdisciplinary Experiments
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Mediation Concepts Research

What Does Water Sound Like? A Citizen Science Game About Music and Imagination

What do we see in our mind’s eye when we listen to music? And to what extent is this influenced by what others have heard before us? These are the questions explored by the digital station “Sounds of Water” in...
Meet the Team Object Stories
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OnWater Colonialism

Object Stories: Bastian Herbst and the Naval Shipworm

From the Series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   “The naval shipworm is a striking example of just how powerful even the smallest creatures can be,” explains Bastian Herbst, Curator for Outreach at the Humboldt Labor. In the exhibition On...
OnWater Research
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Mediation Concepts

“Science Is Like a Journey”

Inken Sarah Mischke on short films about research, the enthusiasm behind scientific work, and the question of how knowledge leads to change. Interview: Dr. Thomas Lilge · Conducted on September 28, 2026 Inken Sarah Mischke is a cinematographer, director, and...
OnWater Gestaltung
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Literatur Literature Design

Following the Traces of Water: Exhibition Catalog “On Water. Fluid Perspectives”

Water connects seas and clouds, glaciers and cities, humans, animals, and plants. It flows through landscapes, bodies, and stories—and lies at the heart of the exhibition On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin. The accompanying exhibition catalogue, On Water. Fluid Perspectives, will...
Meet the Team Object Stories
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Environment OnWater

Object Stories: Max Illner and the Diatoms

From the Series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team” “How do you exhibit something that is barely visible?” This was the question Max Illner, technical curator at the Humboldt Labor, faced when developing the diatom display case. These microorganisms native to...
Meet the Team Object Stories
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OnWater

Object Stories: Heide Barrenechea and the Berlin Stones

From the series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   For Heide Barrenechea, Head of the Humboldt Labor, the display case containing the Berlin stones embodies what On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin is all about. Positioned right at the entrance to...
OnWater Climate Change
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Society

Water from the Air – An Evening of Science, Art, and Hands-On Exploration

During the Long Night of Science on June 6, 2026, the Humboldt Labor opened its doors for an evening devoted entirely to atmospheric water. Under the title “Water from the Air: Fog, Clouds, and New Approaches to Water Harvesting,” talks,...
Meet the Team Object Stories
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OnWater Collection

Anja Walther and the Four-Fluke Anchor

From the series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   For Anja Walther the small nineteenth-century four-fluke boat anchor (grapnel) is emblematic of the eventful history of university collections in Berlin. In On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin, the museologist approaches the...
OnWater Research

In Conversation: Voices on “On Water” — Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ernst-Auga

Water Worlds and Outer Space In the search for extraterrestrial life, water is considered a key element. Why do we so readily associate water with life—and what does that reveal about our own understanding of life? So far, we know...
OnWater Meet the Team
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Object Stories

Object Stories: Anna-Lisa Dieter and the Corals

From the series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   Anna-Lisa Dieter is drawn to objects that tell more than they reveal at first glance. As curator of On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin, she developed the exhibition’s concept and narrative. Together...
Meet the Team Object Stories
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Environment OnWater

Object Stories: Lena Fließbach and the Rights for the Spree River

From the series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   Lena Fließbach is particularly fascinated by exhibition objects that make social change visible. As she moves through On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin, the Humboldt Labor’s Curator for Outreach repeatedly finds herself...
OnWater Meet the Team
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Species Extinction Object Stories

Object Stories: Eileen Klingner and the Crayfish

From the series: “Object Stories: Meet the Team”   “These two crayfish always get me thinking,” says Eileen Klingner, pointing to two inconspicuous wet specimens in the section dedicated to river dwellers. As Curatorial and Management Assistant at the Humboldt...
OnWater Report
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Society Mediation Concepts

5 Years of Humboldt Labor: One Anniversary, Many Perspectives

Humboldt Labor also marked the fifth anniversary of the Humboldt Forum with a special program bringing together science, art, and public engagement in many different ways. Throughout the day, visitors were invited to discover Humboldt Labor from a range of...
Gestaltung Research
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Climate Change

Beyond the Object: Exploring Water, Clay, and Collective Making with Dimitra Almpani-Lekka

In the On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin exhibit at Humboldt Labor, architect and researcher Dimitra Almpani-Lekka presents Cheimarros, a ceramic installation that explores how architecture might actively harvest, circulate, and share water within urban environments. Rather than proposing a finished...
Mediation Concepts OnWater

Giving Materials a Second Life: The WasserGestalten Workshop

As the creator of WasserGestalten, the family workshop accompanying the exhibition On Water. WasserWissen in Berlin at the Humboldt Labor in the Humboldt Forum, artist Vitor  Garcia de Almeida invites children and their families to explore the relationship between water,...
Mediation Concepts Collection
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Report Research

Intervention on the GDR Art Holdings – A Student Research Project at the Humboldt Labor

In October 2024, the pop-up exhibition “Erziehung, Auftragskunst, ästhetischer Wille? Der DDR-Kunstbestand an der Humboldt-Universität” (Education, Commissioned Art, Aesthetic Will? The GDR Art Holdings at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) was held in the seminar room of the Humboldt Labor in cooperation...
Mediation Concepts Communication

The Humboldt Lab’s new website: Visual appearance as a formula

The Humboldt Lab combines science, exchange and the joy of experimentation – a concept that is aptly reflected in the lab’s new flexible visual identity. The special mixture of integration and independence led to the development of a visual design...
Society Research

A Question of Perspective

Since its opening in July 2021, the exhibition After Nature in the Humboldt Lab has changed and evolved. In addition to new research stations and objects, new texts have been written by young people and students. With the help of...
Environment Society

City, Countryside and River under Change

How do ecosystems change with rising temperatures? Where are potential flood plains in the Berlin-Brandenburg region? And how must cities and municipalities manage their (waste) water in order to protect people and the environment in the future? Researchers from the...
Technology Mediation Concepts

Past and Future of the Great Aletsch Glacier

A 200-year-old relief of the Alps meets an interactive virtual reality installation. During the Berlin Science Week, the historical Aletsch model from the Humboldt Forum and the VR project „Expedition 2 Grad“ from the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg and...
Communication After Nature

The world is smaller than you think

How do colours affect us? Does the hand of a chimpanzee belong in a museum? And can our consumer behaviour help to improve conditions in the global clothing industry? These are questions that Mouhamed Abed-Ali and Jan Hagen discussed with...
Mediation Concepts Species Extinction

Treasure hunt in the Wunderkammer

New educational concepts for pupils in the Humboldt Lab From pangolins to washing-up liquid bottles: Bachelor’s and Master’s students at Humboldt-Universität have developed concepts in seminars to explore and discuss objects in the Humboldt Lab with pupils from a primary...
Racism Responsibility

Human larynxes in the sound archive

A research project investigated the history of the origin of the ‘Human Remains’. The specimens may have come from prisoners of war in what is now Namibia. This text addresses war, physical violence, human remains and racism, which some readers...
Responsibility Colonialism

Moving the Forum: Living masks and dancing bodies

The Humboldt Forum will be set in motion on 11 June. The fourth and final part of the Moving the Forum project, entitled Interacting, will be presented at various locations inside and outside the cultural institution. In this context, the...
Responsibility Interaction

The constructed reef: corals from Cuba

Corals from Cuba tell a little-known story of science and politics, of collecting and destruction, of images and likenesses. Less than a decade after the Cuban Revolution, scientists and taxidermists from the Institute for Special Zoology and the Zoological Museum...
Environment Responsibility

Robofish’ interactive research station

An interactive research station of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Science of Intelligence’ (TU) The robotic fish system consists of one or more fish robots that are recognised as conspecifics by living fish. As the robots can be controlled from a...
Interaction Research

New in the Humboldt Lab: Adaptive Rationality

Experimental setup on individual and collective decision-making processes of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Science of Intelligence’ (TU) and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development This experiment by the ‘Adaptive Rationality’ research group examines in a playful and informative way...
After Nature Responsibility

Reinventing nature – UniSysCat Cluster of Excellence

At the Cluster of Excellence Unifying Systems in Catalysis (UniSysCat) at Technische Universität Berlin, scientists are researching the future of ‘green chemistry’. The aim is to conserve resources, work energy-efficiently and avoid waste. Greenopolis looks like modern science fiction: a...
Literature Interdisciplinary Experiments

Literature for the ears: The Temporal Communities Cluster

With the audio exhibition ‘Zugetextet – Literatur als intermediale Praxis’, the Cluster of Excellence ‘Temporal Communities’ at Freie Universität opens up new perspectives on exhibition objects in the Humboldt Labor. In 1806, masses of rock broke loose on the Rossberg...
Interdisciplinary Experiments

It’s worth taking the game seriously

The Humboldt Lab is not just a physical place that can be entered and viewed. It can also be experienced as a digital space in the form of a game developed by gamelab.berlin, an interdisciplinary research and development platform at...
After Nature Interaction

Krickelkrackel and the opening of an exhibition

The exhibition as a point & click adventure: the digital dependence of the Humboldt Lab An exhibition is always an assemblage of things and visitors, of information, feelings and ideas. Its actual content is the relationships that can arise between...
Colonialism Responsibility

Excavations in the spirit of international friendship – Archaeology in Sudan

Humboldt-Universität has been involved in archaeological excavation projects in Sudan for 60 years – starting with Fritz and Ursula Hintze, who made a sensational discovery. The Humboldt Laboratory provides insights into a research collaboration in which equal co-operation was a...
Report Society

The voice of the great-grandfather

Descendants can help decipher the stories and origins of recordings in the sound archive – like the great-grandson of a civil servant who recorded a dialect recording in the 1930s. Many people recognise the faces of their ancestors from photo...
After Nature Responsibility

Behind the scenes

Welcome to the Humboldt Lab
Interdisciplinary Experiments

Encounter with the digital twin of our brain

At a research station in the Humboldt Lab, the ‘Adaptive Digital Twin’ project of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Matters of Activity’ and Charité Berlin will take a look inside the human brain. 3D models of this complex organ will be...
Racism Responsibility

The Hahne-Niehoff Archive: History as a critical mirror

Photos from the Hahne-Niehoff archive provide insights into regional festivals and their folkloristic recording from the 1920s to the 1940s. They show the connection between folklore and the rise of National Socialism. A float was decorated for the parade. At...
Environment Collection
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Mediation Concepts

A rediscovered royal treasure

The Aletsch model was once the main attraction of the Berlin Kunstkammer There is a landscape model of the Swiss Alps in the Geomorphological-Geological Collection of the Humboldt University of Berlin (HU). What was not known for a long time...
Mediation Concepts Collection
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After Nature

Renaissance of the Wrinkled Apple

Models from Arnoldi’s Fruit Cabinet demonstrate in the Humboldt Lab how diverse the range of German varieties could be Apples are a fruit to which we are accustomed, one that seems normal and ordinary to us and as the subject...
Communication Technology

The future in the sewing machine box

Old and new objects from the university’s collections play a central role in the exhibition in the Humboldt Laboratory. Computers from the C.A.S.E collection show how rapidly technology – and its significance for science – has developed in recent decades....
Interaction Research
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Society

Expedition to the Nerve Centre of Human Beings

The NeuroCure cluster of excellence takes visitors to the Humboldt Lab on a journey into the human brain and shows how electrical impulses originate shape in the brain. There are even plans to enable exhibition visitors to take a look...
Mediation Concepts

Exploring an architecture of knowledge

The ArchitekturenExperimente research group is investigating in the Humboldt Lab the influence that exhibition space design has on conveying the content of an exhibition. How do people make their way around exhibitions? Some may approach them intuitively, letting themselves be...
Communication

Yiddish language testimony of an ethnic German

The Humboldt Lab will feature the audio recordings of Emilie S. – a trader who was resettled in the early 1940s ‘I am Protestant-German, but I will tell you something in Yiddish,’ says Emilie S. at the beginning of the...
Responsibility

Challenges for Liberal Democracy

In the Humboldt Lab the Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS) excellence cluster deals with the promises of liberal society. What are they? What problems and conflicts accompany them? And how are liberal democracies responding to current challenges such as...
After Nature Responsibility

Jade-Green Army of Freedom Fighters

The Spanish artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo is exhibiting in the Humboldt Lab small figures that depict the Tank Man, an icon of the history of democracy. In 1989, during the student protests on Tian’anmen Square, the young man stood in...
Society

Censored family life

The Humboldt Laboratory is showing a children’s Bible with passages from Colonia Dignidad pasted over / It is one of 38 special individual objects hanging from the ceiling. Surrounded by animals, Adam and Eve stand under trees. Eve is feeding...
Interaction

“Fascinating and Frightening at the Same Time”

The HU’s IRI THESys Institute presents in the Humboldt Lab research projects from a connected world. A multimedia map of the world is the focal point of the exhibition, a map so large that it can hardly be taken in...
After Nature Colonialism
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Environment

Persiflage on the Desire for the Exotic

The Humboldt Lab is exhibiting two works by the Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumè, who makes masks out of old plastic canisters – canisters But a that are used in his country to smuggle petrol in perilous conditions. At a fleeting...
After Nature Technology
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Environment

On the Traces of the Proto-Dinosaur

Orobates pabsti lived 300 million years ago. Using a 3D model of its skeleton, the Humboldt Labor demonstrates what cutting-edge modern research looks like. Researchers reconstructed how the proto-dinosaur moved around. With its yellow backbone, red head and two blue...
Colonialism Collection
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Responsibility

The acoustic trail of Bayume Mohamed Husen

Post-colonial research: An audio recording by Bayume Mohamed Husen stored in the sound archive of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin provides an insight into the colonial entanglements of Berlin’s urban and university history. Who is speaking here? What was read out and...
Colonialism Collection
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Literature

A Piece of German-African Literary History

Janheinz Jahn’s valuable estate is on show at the Humboldt Forum Letters, books, photos and audio files from the estate of Janheinz Jahn, 1918–73, will form part of the Humboldt-Universität’s inaugural event at the Humboldt Forum, providing insights into a...
After Nature Interdisciplinary Experiments

With the Robofish on the Trail of Top-Level Research

The Science of Intelligence cluster of excellence makes research manifest in the HU’s exhibition areas at the Humboldt Forum. On average, clusters funded by the excellence strategy of Germany’s federal state governments receive about € 6.75 million a year. From...
After Nature

The testimony of the court pharmacy

The Berlin Palace was already a place of science in the 16th century. A labour report from the time tells us something about the role of women there In 1731, the court apothecary at Berlin Palace, Caspar Neumann, issued a...
Mediation Concepts

Humboldt Forum

A unique meeting place for science and culture in the centre of Berlin The Humboldt Laboratory is located in a unique place: with the opening of the HUMBOLDT FORUM, a new centre of culture and science is being created between...
Collection

A Rediscovery

Historic dialect recordings from the Sound Archives will be available to hear at the Humboldt Forum The University’s inaugural exhibition at the Humboldt Forum will focus on a collection that has hitherto enjoyed scant attention: the historic dialect collection of...
After Nature Technology

Of self-driving cars and woollen sheep

With the MATH+ Cluster of Excellence, visitors to the HU exhibition in the Humboldt Forum are immersed in the world of mathematics How can we ensure that there is less congestion on the roads? How can we utilise the volumes...
Design Interaction
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Environment

“The Future Lies in a New Kind of Analog”

The Matters of Activity excellence cluster investigates the inner structures of materials with a view to making them usable. While the challenges of digitisation are discussed elsewhere, scientists in the cluster of excellence have moved on. “We say that the...