Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies

The Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) is an institute of advanced studies at Heidelberg University. Since opening in 2021, it has invited renowned researchers from around the world to Heidelberg to pursue their individual research projects within the Centre's inter- and transdisciplinary setting. Research at CAPAS generally addresses the question of how catastrophes and end-time scenarios affect societies, individuals, and environments, starting from the premise that the concept of Apocalypse offers a unique and productive way of approaching present and past experiences of world-ending and world-making.

CAPAS Fellows are at the core of the Centre's research community. Each year, CAPAS awards approximately 15 fellowships to advanced scholars from around the world and from a wide range of academic disciplines. The fellowships support individual research projects and offer an open and collaborative environment for interdisciplinary dialogue, free from the day-to-day commitments of academia. In Heidelberg, CAPAS Fellows actively shape the Centre’s research programme and have the opportunity to engage in innovative outreach activities.

With the start of the second funding period in 2025, research at CAPAS focuses on the concept of "apocalyptic experience”. Encompassing the essential dimensions of time, space, and affect, this guiding concept allows for a innovative perspective on the scale of the apocalypse, concentrating not solely on global world endings but also on the experiences of smaller groups and individuals, differentiated in turn by their subjectivities, positionalities, and vulnerabilities in the face of (post-)apocalypse(s). Four annual topics will thus structure the research at the Centre in the coming years: Biopolitics, Subjectivities, Vulnerabilities, and Transformation.

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.