When kosta mathéy moved from cosmopolitan london to the provincial town darmstadt in germany to take up his first lecturing job at tu darm-stadt in 1981, he sought to keep close professional contact to other colleagues in germany and beyond. At the time, before the invention of internet, a journal seemed to be good idea to achieve it - and this vision of a journal was to become TRIALOG.
Together with some friends and colleagues, an association was founded with the same name as the journal, to recruit the editorial board, which regularly met at least once a year. The group discovered some funding for educational events linked to development cooperation and this could cover the travelling costs to attend the meetings - which soon turned into a regular conference and permitted a two-way communication - other than just the one-way communication through a journal.
From 1983 until the year 2000 kosta mathéy remained member of the editorial board and stood for a transdisciplinary discourse which seems a mandatory when dealing with housing and urbanization in the global south. Equally sensitive was the desire to involve in the discussion both, academic and practitioners. It is important to note that at those times, the fundamental interest was the exchange of new and information between the readers, and equally between makers of TRIALOG. There was no other media available that would offer the same.
However, history passes through contradictory epochs. International cooperation has almost disappeared from the political agenda - and as a consequence, the audience involved in practical field work is shrinking. At the same time, competition is spreading among academia, and the first priority of the current TRIALOG makers' generation is to accumulate peer reviewed research papers rather than, for example, engage in bottom-up neighbourhood initiatives in the global south. But there is still hope that, first of all, TRIALOG will remain a publication with inspiring contributions made for its readers, and can avoid the risk of becoming just another purely academic research journal of which we already have many enough.
TRIALOG
The following TRIALOG volumes have been edited or co-edited by GLOBUS members. You access the contents by double-clicking on the title icon.
The following TRIALOG volumes have been edited or co-edited by GLOBUS members. You access the contents by double-clicking on the title icon.