Project coordination: Dr. Almut Schneider
Duration: since Februar 2026
Funding: Adickes-Foundation
The Biocultural Diversity Network is dedicated to urban biocultural diversity and investigates how biological and cultural diversity in cities and their peripheries are intertwined and how they mutually shape and transform one another. It brings together researchers from social and cultural anthropology, biology and botany, archaeology and archaeobotany, literary and cultural studies, as well as biodiversity research and other related fields.
Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region serve as the shared research area. Using specific urban and peri-urban sites and materials – gardens and green spaces, pastures, river landscapes, herbaria, archives and collections – the project explores how different disciplinary perspectives and approaches can work together productively. We are interested in what different disciplines perceive in the same subject matter, how their forms of knowledge interact, and what new questions and connections emerge from this.
In an initial phase, the network is developing smaller joint pilot projects on urban biocultural relationships and dynamics. Field and archive days, ethnographic walks and other exploratory formats serve both to advance research and to test interdisciplinary collaboration. The aim is for these shared experiences to initially give rise to viable research questions and forms of collaboration. In the medium to long term – provided that appropriate academic links and shared interests emerge – this could also form the basis for a larger interdisciplinary research consortium. Such a prospect would be jointly developed and supported by the participating disciplines and institutions. The Frobenius Institute is currently coordinating the network and supporting this open development process.
