The aim of the research project is to close a research gap by designing it as a figuration-sociological, biography-analytical study in which the (family) biographical genesis of current protest-oriented engagement is to be reconstructed, questions of generational affiliation and processes of intergenerational transmission of political orientations or delimitations thereof are to be investigated and the significance of media discourses is to be worked out.

The study aims to take a multi-generational perspective in order to reconstruct possible connections between (family) biographical constellations and experiences for civil society, civic and, above all, protest-oriented engagement, in order to examine both the relevance of generational affiliations and community-building processes in organisations, The aim is to reconstruct the relevance of generational affiliations as well as community-building processes in organisations, protest movements and networks, which also include communication processes and civil society discourses, and ultimately to draw conclusions from a longue durée perspective of figuration about processes of change in political engagement and transformations of political orientations that have a formative effect on the political culture of German society and its democracy.

• Schiebel, Martina (2026): ‘Exploring political and civil society engagement through biographical analysis’, in: Schiebel, Martina/Tuider, Elisabeth/Lutz, Helma (eds.): Handbook of Biographical Research, 3rd expanded and updated edition, Wiesbaden: Springer: (Download here)

• Wahl, Johanna Raphaela (2026): Sustainability in Images: Affective Stagings and Digital-Material Aesthetics in the Discourse on Socio-Ecological Transformation, in: Sociology and Sustainability, 12(1), 81–102. https://doi.org/10.17879/sun-2026-9443

• Forthcoming: Wahl, Johanna Raphaela (2026): Digital Visual Worlds in Climate Activism. On the Role of Visual Communication in Protest Action and its Ethical Tensions. *kommunikation@gesellschaft* 27(1).
• Forthcoming: Wahl, Johanna Raphaela (2026): Shifting Future Imaginaries and Evolving Protest in Climate Activism: An Algorithmically Assisted Visual Framing Analysis of Divergent (Self-)Representations, in: Daniel, Antje et al. (eds.) (2026): Unruly Climates, Contested Futures: Imaginaries and Politics of Climate Resistance in Europe (Futures of Sustainability, 9), Frankfurt am Main: Campus.