Global historical upheavals, transformations of cultural heritage and cultures of remembrance, changing research cultures and historical perspectives on legal diversity - these topics need international research perspectives. With the Käte Hamburger Centres, the BMBF has been providing outstanding researchers with scope for world-class research in the humanities since 2008.
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Käte Hamburger Centres offer humanities scholars and social scientists the opportunity to conduct research on topics of their choice together with outstanding national and international academics, free from the many obligations of everyday academic life. The centres invite researchers from all over the world, known as fellows, to spend up to twelve months in Germany.
By exchanging ideas with other cultures of knowledge, it is possible to scrutinise one's own assumptions and gain new perspectives. Innovative approaches are used to further develop comparative cultural research and methods in the humanities. The Centres open up a space for interdisciplinary research, often also with small subjects, on new, innovative issues. In this way, the research groups not only achieve excellent research results, but also contribute to the internationalisation of the humanities at universities in Germany and strengthen links with foreign institutions and academic cultures. The Käte Hamburger Centres funding line was evaluated as excellent in 2017.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is therefore continuing this successful model with the announcement on the funding of the Käte Hamburger International Centres (Federal Gazette of April 1, 2019). The BMBF is reacting to current developments: In addition to "classical International Centres", funding under funding line II can now also be provided for those who are pursuing a transdisciplinary study in the area of cooperation between the humanities and the life sciences, the natural sciences, technology and engineering, for example, on cultures of research or on global challenges such as climate change.
Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies
Käte Hamburger Centre: "Cultures of Research”
Käte Hamburger Centre: "Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation”
Käte Hamburger Centre: "Legal Unity and Plurality”
Käte Hamburger Centre „Heritage in Transformation“
Käte Hamburger Centre "Cultural practices of reparation"
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies investigates systemic change and collapse in societies, individuals and environments of the past and present, as well as future concepts for the time after collapse. The transdisciplinary research group brings together the apocalypse as a figure of thought and discourse tradition in the humanities with social and natural science approaches that focus on empirically observable changes in social and/or natural systems. The Centre thus contributes to current debates on social and ecological collapses and future concepts.
Board of Directors:
Prof. Dr Robert Folger, Prof. Dr Thomas Meier, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Website
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Cultures of Research" is dedicated to the diverse research cultures of the sciences and humanities, their similarities, differences and transformations. The interdisciplinary discourse focuses on the question of how the orientation of the sciences towards complex systems and their social challenges such as climate change, energy transition, biologisation and sustainability is changing research and how this is increasing the epistemic and participatory complexity of research.
Board of Directors:
Prof. Dr Gabriele Gramelsberger, Prof. Dr Stefan Böschen, RWTH Aachen University
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation" examines historical and contemporary processes of globalisation. Focusing on the concept of dis:connectivity, the Centre rethinks the current understanding of globalisation as an unstoppable intensification of global consolidation and networking and, in contrast, emphasises the mutually dependent, tense relationship between global interdependence, lack of connection and disentanglement.
Board of Directors:
Prof. Dr Roland Wenzlhuemer, Prof. Dr Christopher Balme, Prof. Dr Burcu Dogramaci, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Unity and Diversity in Law" examines phenomena of the unresolved simultaneity of unity and diversity in law from a historical perspective: according to the thesis, legal diversity is not a sign of "defective law" or non-functioning legal practice, but rather a supra-temporal and supra-regional structural feature of law per se. The Centre aims to open up the connection between unity and diversity in law in a new way and to put it up for discussion as an analytical approach to various phenomena of coexistence.
Board of Directors:
Prof. Dr Peter Oestmann, Prof. Dr Ulrike Ludwig, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Heritage in Transformation" (InHerit) is developing a new, transdisciplinary and practice-oriented form of heritage studies that focuses on humanities perspectives on global social upheaval processes. The Centre addresses central questions of our time - about identity and difference, belonging and ownership or the relationship between history, present and future. Last but not least, it addresses the question of what role cultural heritage and natural heritage and their interactions can play in the future shaping of social and transcultural relationships.
Directorate: Prof. Dr Eva Ehninger, Prof. Dr Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The research group is dedicated to analysing cultural practices of reparation from a historical, transnational and transmedial perspective. "History" focuses on memory cultures and historical-political discourses, "Experience" on individual experiences of loss and damage and "Nature" on cultural-ecological issues. With its research, the research group aims to make a contribution to the reorientation of cultural studies and create knowledge about individual and collective reparation processes in a globalised world, which is fundamental for future coexistence.
Board of Directors:
Prof. Dr Christiane Solte-Gresser, Prof. Dr Markus Messling, Saarland University
Between 2007 and 2011, an international panel of experts selected a total of ten further “Käte Hamburger Centres” on the following topics:
KHK Duisburg-Essen: Centre for Global Cooperation Research
KHK Jena: Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena: Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century
KHK HU Berlin: Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History
KHK Munich: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
KHK Cologne: Morphomata. Genesis, Dynamics and Mediality of Cultural Figurations
KHK Bochum: Dynamics in the History of Religions
KHK Weimar: International Centre for Cultural Skills Research and Media Philosophy
KHK FU Berlin: Interweaving Performance Cultures
The Käte Hamburger Centre "Centre for Global Cooperation Research" is an interdisciplinary centre conducting research into global cooperation. It examines the challenges and opportunities of global cooperation in a culturally diverse global society defined not least by the rise of new regional and global powers. Based on exemplary problem areas the Centre asks how global governance can be organised in view of increasing political and cultural differentiation set against problems that are worldwide in scope.
Director:
Prof. Dr. Sigrid Quack, University of Duisburg-Essen
Co-Directors:
Prof. Dr. Tobias Debiel, University of Duisburg-Essen
Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner, German Development Institute, Bonn
Prof. Dr. Jan Aart Scholte, University of Gothenburg
The Käte Hamburger Centre "Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century: Comparative Historical Experience" examines central issues of Eastern European contemporary history from a transnational perspective. The Centre explores the origins and function of political violence in Eastern Europe, asks how the state interacts with its citizens and examines the first steps towards democracy. Further key areas are societal transformations and the ideas of modernity that underlie them.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Joachim von Puttkamer, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Dr. Michal Kopeček, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" aims to contribute to an understanding of law in times of increasing globalisation of normative orders. As opposed to the legal sciences, specifically legal doctrine, the Centre aims to apply the categories and methods of the humanities to render law comprehensible as a significant dimension of a globalising world.
Directorate:
Prof. Dr jur. Werner Gephart, University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. jur. Nina Dethloff, University of Bonn
Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht, University of Bonn
The Käte Hamburger Centre "Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History" conducts basic research into the history of work. It explores the relationship between work and life history in the varying historic constellations since the rise of capitalism, and investigates how the relationship between work and social justice was shaped between the generations. The aim of the researchers is to comparatively examine the interactive relationship between work and life history.
Director:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckert, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The activities of the Rachel Carson Center are designed to strengthen the role of the humanities in environmental matters and to increase their previously marginal presence in public debate. The Center collaborates with Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Deutsches Museum in Munich and brings together researchers exploring the relationship between nature and culture based on a historic and genetic perspective across disciplines and in various temporal and geographic contexts.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
At the Käte Hamburger Morphomata International Center for Advanced Studies up to ten fellows a year work with researchers from Cologne mainly on the analysis of cultural change. Based on specific cultural items – symbols, figures, works of art – they explore the various stylings of the figurative and develop joint and separate understandings of the cultural creation of meani
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Dietrich Boschung, University of Cologne
Prof. Dr. Günter Blamberger, University of Cologne
The Centre "Fate, Freedom, and Prognostication”. Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe" examines notions of individual and collective fate in the lifestyles and world views of traditional, modern and contemporary China/East Asia. Its findings on the relationship between attitudes to fate and prognostication are intended to permit answers to questions pertaining to the place of freedom in various cultures.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Michael Lackner, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Prof. Dr. Klaus Herbers, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
The Käte Hamburger Centre "Dynamics in the History of Religions" explores the origins and development of the major religious traditions through their encounters and confrontations with each other. It focuses mainly on dynamics of the origin and spread of religions, the mutual permeation of religious traditions and their compression within the complex structures of the so-called world religions in Europe and Asia. The aim of this research is to develop a typology of religious contacts and a theory of religious transfer.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Alexandra Cuffel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Prof. Dr. Kianoosh Rezania, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
The Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) of the Bauhaus University Weimar explores the relationships between people and objects in the technified media culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The starting point of the Centre's research is the assumption that devices and artefacts can no longer be understood as mere tools of cultural activity, perception, comprehension, communication etc., but intervene with a power of their own in cultural and reflective processes.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Lorenz Engell, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Siegert, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
This Käte Hamburger Centre opens up and explores a new field of research: the interrelationships between performance cultures in the context of history and present-day globalisation. Such interrelationships, which go back as far as the late 19th century, are today particularly apparent in international ensemble casts, in collaborative productions between artists from various cultures or in the globally popular international theatre festivals that bring together artistic work from a range of cultures.
Directors:
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.Erika Fischer-Lichte, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter, Freie Universität Berlin
Dr. Christel Weiler
Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat
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