Thinking Utopia: Steps Into Other Worlds

Jörn Rüsen was Professor of Modern History at Universities Bochum and Bielefeld for many years. From 1994 to 1997 he was Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld. Since 1997 he has been President of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut). He specialises in theory and methodology of historical sciences, the history of historiography, intercultural aspects of historical thinking, theory of historical learning, and the history of human rights. Michael Fehr has been Director of the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum of the City of Hagen, Germany, since 1987. Prior to that he was Assistant Professor at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, and Deputy Director at the Art Museum of the City of Bochum. He has curated numerous exhibitions on contemporary art, cultural history and city planning, and, in the 1970s, created and organized for almost one decade the Kemnade International, a cultural festival for immigrant workers and their families in Germany. He has published extensively on contemporary art as well as on theory of museums. He teaches museology at University of Bonn. Thomas W. Rieger studied Art History, Archeology, City Planning and History at Universities Bonn, Zürich, Berlin and Columbia University, New York. He has been working at Museum of Contemporary History Bonn (Stiftung Haus der Geschichte) from 1993 to 1998, and since 1999 at Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen as co-curator of the exhibition project Museutopia - Steps Into Other Worlds (2002). He teaches Theory of Architecture at RWTH Aachen.