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Magazine Humboldt Kosmos

Humboldt belongs to you, but he also belongs to us

Was Alexander von Humboldt an instrument of colonialism or one of the intellectual fathers of the independence movement in Spanish-America? Neither, nor, says Sandra Rebok, historian of science and Humboldt expert.

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Humboldt belongs to you, but he also belongs to us

Magazine Humboldt Kosmos

The heritage researcher

The past, for Sophia Labadi, is very much alive. The ethnologist and expert on heritage studies explores how heritage sites and European museums can promote social justice in African countries, combat poverty and actively counter climate change – along the way, she uncovers how colonial thinking sometimes prevents sustainable development.

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The heritage researcher

News

Research and Diversity: creating habitats

When the ecologist, Marion Cordonnier, is doing fieldwork, it is sometimes deathly quiet – which is when the Humboldt Fellow and visiting researcher at the University of Regensburg’s Institute of Zoology is busy in cemeteries of small Bavarian towns. Here she collects ants of the Temnothorax species that nest in walls or between the gravestones. “These ants really live in crevices in rock but here they utilise sometimes an artificial environment where they find the same conditions as in their natural habitat,” says Marion Cordonnier. She belongs to the research group around the entomologist, Professor Jürgen Heinze, and uses various methods to study how changed habitats affect the gene flow, the microbiome or the behaviour of ant species.

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Magazine Humboldt Kosmos

An inheritance with long-term consequences

Colonialism was all-embracing and it was violent. It re-organised the world, led to the circulation of knowledge as well as to war, displacement, slavery, oppression and exploitation. The colonial era made deep inroads into identities – and has a huge impact to this day, not least on science and research.

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An inheritance with long-term consequences