Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Europäische Ethnologie

Melanie Garland is an artist, researcher, and lecturer. She completed her PhD in 2024 at the Institute of European Ethnology with the multimodal project Somewhere In Between. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Berlin Landesstelle für Alltagskultur, Institute of European Ethnology, where she is developing the project A Toolbox for Para-Archival Mediation: Practices for Navigating Difficult Heritage. Her previous postdoctoral work includes affiliations with the Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum (DSM), Leibniz Institute for Maritime History, and the DFG-funded research-unit Collaboration through the project Postcolonial Neighborhood at the University of Potsdam and Humboldt University of Berlin

Visiting Scholar Project (2026): A Toolbox for Para-Archival Mediation: Practices for Navigating Difficult Heritage

Beginning in January 2026, Melanie Garland will be a guest researcher at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Landesstelle für Alltagskultur, in collaboration with the Institute for European Ethnology and the Centre for Cultural Technique at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 

Her project, developed in close collaboration with Dr. Jonas Tinius, director of the Landesstelle, explores a participatory toolbox for para-archival mediation, opening new ways of engaging with institutional archives beyond traditional curatorial practices. Focusing on the collections of the Berlin-Brandenburg Office for Everyday Culture — which reflect complex historical contexts, from imperialism and Nazi ideology to post-reunification subcultures and AIDS/HIV activism — the toolbox offers methods and exercises for students, researchers, cultural practitioners, museum staff, and educators to work critically and ethically with archival material. Through participatory workshops and advisory groups, the project investigates how “awkward archives” can become active spaces of negotiation, shared memory, and critical reflection.

PhD Project (Completed, 2024): Somewhere Inbetween: From So-Called Non-Places Towards Social Places Through The Inbetweenness 

Melanie Garland’s doctoral research is situated in the urgent and highly relevant field of border regimes, migration, and refugee practices. The project emerged from the escalating crisis of European and South American border regimes around 2015, marked by violence, dehumanization, and the establishment of “refugee camps” as tools of control. Focusing on three self-built settlements — The Dzjangal in Calais, Tiburtina in Rome, and Los Arenales in Antofagasta — her research explores how communities-in-transit resisted state-controlled border regimes, occupying abandoned urban spaces to create social places of belonging, alternative modes of coexistence, and solidarity networks. By rethinking “non-places” as sites of conviviality, her work challenges conventional urban hierarchies and highlights the political potential of liminality in migratory contexts.

Combining postcolonial studies, critical geography, and multimodal European ethnology, Melanie integrates artistic practice with ethnography, using sound, critical walking, and participatory methods to explore the multisensory dimensions of placemaking. Her dissertation is an innovative multimodal PhD at the Institute of European Ethnology, comprising a manuscript (Transcript Verlag, June 2026), a multimodal website, and a collaborative exhibition.