Research Projects
The INFRAGLOB project aims to offer a new understanding of the making of infrastructure globalities. Observing infrastructure sites, we analyze how emerging powers challenge established theories and practice of international relations.
Employing an innovative integrative methodology, the project generates new empirical knowledge on South-South relations over infrastructure projects. At the core is a practice-theoretical account of change involving Africa, China, and other Southern actors. Thereby, we will open new conceptual horizons for the making of multiple globalities. ...more
Karakul sheep were first brought to Namibia in 1907 as part of a German colonial project. As Swakara, their pelts are sold to high end fashion designers. Until global fur markets collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s, Karakul farming was one of the most important industries in Namibia. Today, Swakara is embedded within narratives of sustainability, indigeneity, animal cruelty and development.
In our project, we are interested in the circulations of people, sheep and knowledges in and through post_colonial spaces and timescales. ...more
The Network „Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict“ is a collaborative project of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (Freiburg), the Center for Conflict Studies at the Philipps University Marburg, the University of Bayreuth, and the University of Erfurt. It is an interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
The Network investigates how historically formed postcolonial hierarchies manifest themselves in contemporary conflict dynamics and what implications this has for sustainable conflict transformation in the future. To do so, the Network brings together historical perspectives on the contexts of conflict formation (in particular those shaped by colonialism) with postcolonial research perspectives as well as with methodologies and theories of peace and conflict research. ...more
Our interdisciplinary research group studies projects of transformation in Niger. These projects are pursued by state and non-state actors who allude in their practices and visions of change to Islam and/or Christianity. Specifically, we are looking at a Salafi organisation, Turkish NGOs and the Turkish state, and Pentecostal churches. We propose the concept of “religious engineering” to analyse those active and conscious attempts to work on the future shape of society where the actors refer to religious resources such as religious knowledges, practices, identities, or institutions. ...more
When tyranny ends, when societies come to terms with their past, or when values change, we observe that people contest meanings in times of transition. How these struggles unfold is essential for societal peace in the present and future.
In the research network Conflicts.Meanings.Transitions we examine these conflicts from an interdisciplinary perspective.
In particular, we focus on meaning struggles over peace strategies by non-state actors, over violence, and over universal rights and diversity. ...more