Knowledge Unbound – New International Research Project

Since spring 2019 the large-scale “Knowledge Unbound: Internationalisation, Networking, Innovation in and by the Max Weber Stiftung” research project has been pursuing the aim of opening up innovative areas of research. The title reflects the project’s fundamental direction: adhering to the precept of pursuing “knowledge without borders”, attention is being directed towards selected research areas – which, in addition to Europe, comprise key regions such as Africa, Near and Middle East and the Pacific region. They will be gauged again with respect to the hitherto little explored knowledge ties between them and the relationships with each other will be established. The project is composed of two different modules.

Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Bloc (1950-1991) and Interaction and Knowledge in the Pacific Region

Module I comprises two internationally active research groups. Within the first research alliance, Orient-Institut (OI) Beirut with its office in Cairo, the German Historical Institute (GHI) Warsaw and the GHI Moscow deal with the theme of “Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Bloc (1950-1991)”. The intention is to find out how the educational mobility from the 1950s to 1991 between the countries in the former eastern bloc and the regions in West Asia and North Africa developed and how transnational relations were influenced as a result. Special attention will be paid here to the Humanities and Social Sciences.

In the second research group the GHI Moscow, the GHI Washington with its Pacific Regional Office Berkeley, the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo with its research group in Singapore and the China Branch Office in Peking are working together on “Interaction and Knowledge in the Pacific Region: Entanglements and Disentanglements”. The research group’s study focuses in particular on the two theme areas of “Migration and Mobility” and “Environment, Climate, Energy“. As this involves cross-border phenomena, a transnationally oriented research group is especially suited for analysing these aspects. Reasons for choosing the Pacific as a subject of research include the rapid developments – compared to the Atlantic – in this region, which has a globally significant future.

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Merchant Networks in Africa, Medialisation and Scholary Collaboration with Iran

The three standing working groups are organised in Module II. These international groups of researchers meet regularly at varying locations throughout the entire project duration in order to generate new research areas and academically driven questions. In this way, the institutes of the Max Weber Stiftung gain valuable impetus for their research assignments in their respective regions.

In collaboration with Italian, US-American, North-African and South-African partners, the Standing Working Group of GHI Rome is studying “Genoese Merchant Networks in Africa and across the Atlantic Ocean (ca. 1450–1530)” and the importance of the circulation of people, objects and institutes between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic area. Throughout the course of the research project the established narrative of the rise of capitalism in 18th-century Northern Europe will be critically scrutinised. The researchers will determine to what extent similar structures (including those independent of European influence) developed in the “Global South“.

The Standing Working Group of GHI London on the theme of “Medialisation and Empowerment“ unites the partners India Branch Office, OI Beirut, GHI Washington, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi and the Centre for Modern Indian Studies of the University in Göttingen. The research enquires into interactions between the rise of mass media and emancipation movements over the long 20th century. It concentrates on women as the largest self-emancipation reference group and the medial circulation and reception of feminist ideas within a global context.

The Standing Working Group of OI Istanbul along with its partners in Germany, Turkey, Iran, France and Pakistan concerns itself with “Iran and Beyond – Breaking the Ground for Sustainable Scholarly Collaboration (IRSSC): Performance of Culture, Religion and Body as Strategies of Self-Empowerment in the Islamic Republic of Iran“. The focus here is on socio-cultural changes, above all in Iran but also in Turkey and Pakistan. These processes are heavily influenced by national and international migration flows and a rapidly growing urbanisation, which occur against the background of medial globalisation processes and reciprocal cultural influences. In this context, the Standing Working Group also examines how the processes which are to be described are being controlled by these countries’ political elites according to their own interests.

If you want to find out more about this large scale project please check out the project’s new blog here.