The SFB short film:

About property in transition and the work of the SFB.

This film is the work of Catharina Göldner and Katharina Hamann.

The members of the Collaborative Research Centre in summer 2023

Image: Marlen van den Ecker

Welcome to the website of the Collaborative Research Centre TRR 294 "Structural Change of Property"!

The Collaborative Research Centre pursues the goal of investigating the fundamental structural change of property that could be observed at the latest since 1989. The Collaborative Research Centre contains a total of 23 subprojects at eight locations in Germany: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Sprecher*innenhochschule), Universität Erfurt, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Leibniz-Institute for Research on Society and Space, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Technische Universität Darmstadt.

While private property has gained in importance worldwide since 1989 under conditions of increasing concentration and deregulation, the resulting property system has proved to be both crisis-prone and highly controversial in the face of new economic, political and technological challenges. It isn't challenged only by the global financial and economic crises, but also by political conflicts over the appropriation, distribution and containment of private property, as well as by the dynamics of the knowledge and bio-economies, which are linked to alternative concepts of common property, shared use and free access to resources.

News

“A socio-ecological transformation is only possible when we focus on property”

In an interview with Freitag, Hartmut Rosa discusses the relevance of property in the context of ecological transformation.

Read the interview here

New publication!

A new edited volume in the series “Structural Change in Property Ownership” on Nomad Properties has been published, edited by Anna Möllers, Dirk Schuck, and Bernhard Kleeberg. While the discourse on nomadism in the 18th and 19th centuries was intertwined with colonial contexts and notions of so-called “primitive” societies, it became more multifaceted in the 20th century with the emergence of “modern nomadism.” This anthology examines the connection between nomadic structures and property and gives voice to a wide variety of perspectives, including those of the little-known traveling minority known as the Yenish.

 

New blog post online!

In her new blogpost, Lydia von der Weth argues that engaging seriously with alternative property traditions—in this case Islamic legal thought, can help us confront some of the most pressing challenges that contemporary property regimes face.

To the blog post

New Working Paper online

Discussions on environmental, climate, or energy justice tend to focus primarily on downstream effects such as social inequality, rather than on the nature of property itself and its influence on social conditions. Similarly, the effects of socio-ecological transformation processes on property relations are rarely researched or described in detail, even though far-reaching changes and conflicts are to be expected in this area as well. Our new Working Paper 11, “Property and Socio-Ecological Transformation. Some Conceptual Considerations on a Neglected Connection,” addresses this tension.

 

Climate Action must be fair

In an interview with the Ostthüringer Zeitung,Silke van Dyk and Hartmut Rosa explain how property rights determine the success of environmental measures. An event entitled “Who owns the future?”, addressing issues of ownership and the ecological crisis, will be held on Thursday, January 15, at 6 p.m. at the Volksbad Jena.

Read the interview here

New Publication!

In their “activity-based theory of rent,” authors Marlen van den Ecker, Tilman Reitz, and Sebastian Sevignani attempt to systematize existing theoretical approaches to rent economics in digital capitalism. The authors argue that these concepts ignore various forms of human activity that underlie rent extraction: unpaid activities or activities not employed by the rentier, such as software development, academic research, and produser activities.

Read here

New publication!

The new volume ‘Property Conflicts: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives’ in our series ‘Structural Change in Property’ has been published. Kathrin Leuze, Joachim von Puttkamer, Marion Reiser and Sylka Scholz have compiled texts that examine the various conflicts in our contemporary capitalist society. This raises the question of whether these conflicts have the potential to fundamentally transform social property structures. 

Click here for the book (open access)

New: Dossier Socio-ecological Transformation and Property

This dossier deals with our current “topic of the semester”: property and socio-ecological transformation.In addition to many other contributions, our first dossier includes an interview with Tilo Wesche about his book "Die Rechte der Natur“ as part of the video series ”DFG bewegt“, as well as a blog post by Helen Bönnighausen, Luzie Gerstenhöfer, Maria Pfeiffer, Marco Sonnberger, and Anne Tittor on ”Energy transition for all? On the complex relationship between energy transition, co-determination, and ownership structures," (in German) which is the result of an SFB workshop on the topic. 

read more

Relaunch New Library of Property

Our New Library of Property is now available on this website. An extensive database provides information on relevant publications on the subject of property, the quarterly sources give an insight into our research projects, and our thematic dossiers present a wide variety of sources on current social debates.

To the News archive...

Events

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität; Jena

Antifaschistische Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

The 6th Annual Conference of the Critical Communication Studies Network on the topic of “Antifascist Media and Communication Studies” will take place from April 16–18, 2026, in Jena. The two keynote speakers will be Vanessa E. Thompson (Queens University, Canada) and Alex Demirović (Goethe University Frankfurt/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin). 

visit page
To the complete schedule of dates...

An overview of the most important events of the Collaborative Research Center is available here.