News Archive – YRG Geographies of Digital Infrastructures

10.11.2025 – At the beginning of November, the annual meeting of the Working Group on Digital Geography took place in Frankfurt am Main. Under the theme “Digital geographies of valuation: platforms, technologies, narratives,” our young research group contributed two presentations in the session on Politics of digital infrastructures. As the final conference of the year, the meeting was a great opportunity to gain new inspiration for our research project. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the organizers.

10.11.2025 – At the beginning of November, the Federal Ministry for Technology and Space invited participants to this year’s status conference of the funding line “Early-Career Research Groups in Scientific and Technical Peace and Conflict Research with a Focus on Arms Control.” Through poster presentations, the young research groups were able to showcase their respective projects and present initial interim results. The exchange across various disciplines gave us the opportunity to present and discuss our project with a transdisciplinary audience for the first time. Many thanks to the DLR project managers and the BMFTR for the productive exchange.

20.10.2025 – On November 17, we will present our new book „The Elgar Companion to the Geopolitics of Digital Sovereignty“ together with colleagues from the FAU and the Parisian research group „Geopolitics of the Datasphere“ in the Orangerie in Erlangen. The volume will be published in the spring of 2026 by Georg Glasze, Amael Cattaruzza, Finn Dammann and Frederick Douzet. For further infos, see the website and the flyer.

03.09.2025 – Three days full of exiting presentations and new inspirations are now behind us.

On day one Finn Dammann (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Boris Michel (MLU Halle-Wittenberg) provided insights into their research on “Geographies of Interconnection Hubs and their geopolitical embeddings.” In their presentation, they demonstrated the multi-scalarity of Internet structures and their historical embedding in diverse geopolitical contexts of transport structures using material geographies of interconnection hubs in Southern Europe and the Philippines.

Our poster on the topic “Interconnection Hubs, Content Delivery Networks and Emerging AI Infrastructures. Insights into the material geographies of “digital ecosystems” in the Western Mediterranean” was also given a prominent place at the conference venue and facilitated a lively exchange on the topic of digital geographies.

In summary, we are delighted with the exciting discussions we had, the great contacts we made, and the interesting input we were able to take away from the RGS!

12.08.2025 – In July 2025, the ‚Handbook of Mobile Methods in Social Spatial Research‘ (edited by Matthias Naumann & Anke Strüver) was published with a contribution by Finn Dammann (together with Pablo Abend and Boris Michel) with the title ‚Critical Infrastructure Walks in Dataficated Worlds‘. The article shows the extent to which critical infrastructure walks can serve as a method for exploring and visualising material geographies and what new perspectives can develop from making visible the necessary work of maintaining digital infrastructures or even historical instability.

The handbook is available here.

19.-20.06.2025 – For the annual conference of the RGS Working Group on Digital Geography, Finn Dammann took the lead in organizing the panel on “Geopolitics of Digital Sovereignty in Global Comparison.” Together with colleagues from the Paris research center GEODE (Geopolitics of the Datasphere), we presented contributions from the new volume The Elgar Companion to the Geopolitics of Digital Sovereignty: Contested Networks, Territories and Self-Determination (to be published in summer 2025, edited by Georg Glasze, Amaël Cattaruzza, Frédérick Douzet & Finn Dammann) and offered a preview of future research areas in the rapidly expanding field of LEO satellite internet.

See here for more information about the panel.

26.05.2025 – The Political Geography Working Group met in Freiburg from May 22 to 24, 2025, for its annual conference on this year’s theme, “Political Geographies in Uncertain Times.” In the session on the power effects of materialities, technologies, and more-than-human dynamics, we presented initial results from our research project “Interconnection Hubs, Content Delivery Networks, and Emerging AI Infrastructures – Insights into the Material Geographies of Digital Colonialism in the Western Mediterranean.” The conference provided us with many new impulses for our research field, and we would like to warmly thank the organizers for the productive exchange.

19.05.2025 – How does Google Maps influence our everyday perceptions and practices in urban spaces – and what alternative maps and geoservices are available? In an interview with the Abendzeitung München, Finn Dammann was asked about the significance of Google Maps in Bavarian cities, the challenges of digital sovereignty over one’s own (geo)data, and alternative mapping projects.

See here for the online article.

12.05.2025 – From May 8 to 10, this year’s interdisciplinary workshop between geographical research and research-based design took place in Halle at the MLU Institute of Geography and the Halle University of Art and Design. Together with around 80 colleagues and students from geography, GIScience, design, media studies, and art, we discussed recent approaches to the critical mapping of social realities and infrastructures – and tested new techniques and methods in hands-on workshops. The now third workshop on critical geovisualization was organized by Pablo Abend and Anna Unterstab (both Halle University of Art and Design, Burg Giebichenstein), Boris Michel and Nora Küttel (both University of Halle), Lea Bauer (University of Leipzig), Francis Harvey (IfL), and Finn Dammann.

05.05.2025 – Josephine Brandenburg, a doctoral student in our working group, has been selected for the funding program of the Graduate Center of the @Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt). Every year, the bidt supports 25 doctoral students conducting research in the field of digital transformation and facilitates networking and further education in the field of digitization research.

We are very happy for Josephine and are excited to see what the future holds!