In the organizer's words:

The lecture series "Thinking Publics" examines changes in public life from a social-theoretical and historical perspective. The series provides a forum for critical reflection on what it means to meet, think and act in public as collective discourses are transformed by increasingly contested orders of knowledge, disintegrating social consensuses and institutional erosion. The lecture series is organized by the ERC project "The Arts of Autonomy: Pamphleteering, Popular Philology, and the Public Sphere (1988-2018)" (Amerika-Institut, LMU Munich). On 14 January 2026, sociologist Nils C. Kumkar ("Polarization", Suhrkamp 2025) will be a guest at the Glockenbachwerkstatt on the topic of "Polarization and the introspection of democratized public spheres".