Forschungscampus Dahlem

In the location's words:

What is the Dahlem Research Campus?

The Dahlem Research Campus is a place for interdisciplinary research that facilitates encounters and exchange. Changing presentations, exhibitions and projects take place here, accompanied by lectures, talks, guided tours, film screenings and family events.

Seven institutions from the SPK cosmos, some of which are located at the Dahlem site, have joined forces to form the Dahlem Research Campus. These include the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of Asian Art, the Museum of European Cultures, the Institute for Museum Research, the Art Library, the Gipsformerei and the Rathgen Research Laboratory of the National Museums in Berlin as well as the Ibero-American Institute.

A network for shared knowledge

The Dahlem Research Campus is more than just a research location: it sees itself as a network that develops, presents and communicates new knowledge on material and immaterial cultures in the Dahlem collections by linking different competencies and perspectives. The Dahlem Research Campus is based on the attitude of making research processes visible, making them transparent and enabling the participation of different interest groups in the development of new knowledge: Different forms of knowledge are treated equally and considered together at the Dahlem Research Campus, and traditional knowledge hierarchies are abolished.

CULTURES - RESEARCH - THINGS - KNOWLEDGE in dialog

The terms CULTURES - RESEARCH - THINGS - KNOWLEDGE characterize the work of the Dahlem Research Campus: they reflect the diverse facets of the collections and are in a lively exchange with each other. Things carry knowledge within them, knowledge is at the same time a motor for cultures and contributes to the creation of new things. Research on and with cultures works in different directions, as does the relationship between research and things.

The Dahlem Research Campus also calls itself "FC Dahlem", thus underlining the playful approach that characterizes the production and communication of knowledge. FC Dahlem aims to break down the hierarchies between the knowledge systems and contribute to equal cooperation on research issues.

Cooperation with the Free University of Berlin

The Dahlem Research Campus has a strategic partnership with the Freie Universität Berlin: Together, new approaches to learning and teaching are being developed and tested for collection-based research at the Dahlem site.

The DenkRaum as a laboratory for new exhibition concepts

New ways of designing exhibitions are being tested in the "DenkRaum" sub-project. In a collaborative process, a presentation on the main topic of "Time & Temporality" was created together with academic and non-academic guests and opened in 2024. The stations of the presentation can still be seen on site.

At the same time, the DenkRaum will continue to grow successively and will be expanded in 2026 through a cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities" at Freie Universität Berlin to include the topic of "Narrative Material".

Through the continuous integration of participatory elements, the DenkRaum invites visitors to actively participate and help shape the exhibition as an open process of research and storytelling. The DenkRaum at the Dahlem Research Campus is funded by the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz.