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Staged Public

Scholar's Choice exhibition at Völkerkundemuseum

Within the context of the official opening of the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS), the vernissage to "The Scholar’s Choice" took place at the Völkerkundemuseum Heidelberg on June 25. The exhibition shows favorite objects of 17 scholars from Heidelberg who are particularly close to CATS. The objects, which are mostly from Asia, are exhibited until November 27.

As part of the Heidelberg-Tohoku Joint Degree Programme, doctoral candidates at Heidelberg University in Asian and Transcultural Studies are eligible to apply for a one-year doctoral scholarship starting in April 2020 to study at the Graduate School of Law at Tohoku University.

From June 28 to 29, participants of the third "Salon for Slow Reading and Deep Looking" convened at the Hotel Niederwald in Rüdesheim am Rhein. Organized by Profs. Monica Juneja and Sumathi Ramaswamy the salon addressed the theme “Monumental Matters”.

The “Shaping Asia” network, coordinated by Prof. Christiane Brosius jointly with Prof. Dr. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (Bielefeld), will host a roundtable during ICAS 11. The roundtable “Shaping Asia: Connectivities, Comparisons, Collaborations between Asia and Europe” will explore the challenges of Asia-centered research in Europe on July 16.

HCTS members will be convening the workshop “Engaging Translations and Circulations Across Asia and Europe” at the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), which will take place in July 16-19, 2019 at Leiden University. The workshop is divided into four thematic sessions and will be held by members of the HCTS directorate and HCTS professors.

HCTS professor Christiane Brosius, the professor of Visual and Media Anthropology at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, co-edited "Out of Space. Sensory Practices and Placemaking" together with Prof. Holger Schulze. The volume was published with DeGryuter in Paragrana – Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie.

On June 26, the second CATS Open Forum was held in honor of Prof. Rudolf G. Wagner and his lifelong commitment to Chinese and Transcultural Studies. As a surprise, two sponsors from Taiwan handed him a check for 100.000 € designated to support his editorship of the open access journal "Transcultural Studies."

In the summer semester 2019, the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies has been and is hosting eight international visiting fellows and guest professors: Atul Bhalla, Prof. Manuela Ciotti, Prof. Arunava Dasgupta, Prof. Robert Hellyer, Prof. Jun Fujii, Dr. Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer, Prof. Perry Link, Prof. Klaus-Diether Mathes, and Prof. Druv Rhaina.

The new issue The Journal of Transcultural Studies 2018/1-2 is available.

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Short News

During ICAS 11, HCTS associate member Feng He is convening two panels on transcultural studies of Chinese ceramics, titled “Global Localities of Chinese Ceramics” I and II. Approaching six in-depth cases from art-historical, technological, geographical, institutional, and cultural economic perspectives, the presentations aim to redefine global objects through their changing localities in the early modern period. Feng He is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of East Asian Art History and a GPTS graduate student at the HCTS. His conference trip is supported by the Heinz-Götze-Foundation for Chinese Art History at Heidelberg University, and the Mary Vidal Memorial Award from the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture.
On July 3, Russell Ó Ríagáin, managing editor at the HCTS, gave a talk at the International Medieval Congress 2019 at the University of Leeds. Within the panel "New Approaches to Viking-Age Identities", he introduced his paper "Shifting Identities in a Medieval Contact Zone: From Corcu Réte to Innse Gall", exploring the material, textual and toponymic evidence for the forming and reforming of the complex series of political and social identities in western Scotland AD 500-1300.

more Short News

Media Reports

Prof. Barbara Mittler and Prof. Axel Michaels wrote an article about CATS for the IIAS newsletter.

SWR4 interviewed Prof. Christiane Brosius about her Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP).

Deutschlandfunk interviewed Prof. Barbara Mittler for "Tag für Tag."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article by Prof. Christiane Brosius.

SWR2 featured Prof. Joseph Maran in radio report.

WDR interviewed Takuma Melber on Pearl Harbor.

Deutschlandfunk broadcasted an interview with Prof. Monica Juneja.

more media reports

Research

Heidelberg Research Architecture
The Cluster brings together a multicultural, multilingual scholarly community for purposes of research in an interdisciplinary field. Efficient collaboration among the researchers in the analysis of transcultural flows requires an IT infrastructure for data storage and exchange, communication and on-line team-work, and, importantly, for information retrieval and analysis.

HRA-Portal

Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies
The Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies (GPTS) offers a structured PhD programme within the interdisciplinary research environment of the Cluster. The doctoral programme offers (a) an introduction to theories and methodologies of transcultural studies, (b) access to a well-equipped work environment supported by European and Asian institutions, (c) participation in the gathering of textual and nontextual source material, (d) support of PhD projects which are linked to the broad research fields pursued by the Cluster.

Read more about the Graduate Programme ...

Read more about the Current Graduates and their Projects ...

Research Area A: Governance & Administration
This Research Area deals with the cultural flows through which concepts, institutions and practices that have to do with governance and administration are transferred across cultures locally, regionally, or globally, and are reconfigured in a continuous but non-linear historical process.

All projects in Research Area A

Research Area B: Public Spheres
Central themes of Research Area B are public spheres - as media, events and spaces - that have been and are built by political and cultural flows between Asia and Europe. There are three research foci: a) aspects of mediality, visuality and textuality, b) aspects of public life, events and performance, and c) aspects of public space and urbanity.

All projects in Research Area B ...

Research Area C: Knowledge Systems
Research Area C focuses on the transfer between Asia and Europe of practices concerning, institutions for, ideas about, and perceptions of health and environment. Practice is the privileged point of access in this Research Area because the processes underlying both health and environment are juxtaposed here with the often pressing need to find a working solution.

All projects in Research Area C ...

Research Area D: Historicities & Heritage
This Research Area analyses different concepts of histories as competing interpretations of time and space. Instead of focusing on models of unified universal or world history, it puts the emphasis on the entanglement of multiple historicities with different cultural background through cultural flows in the way in which history, memory, and their trajectory are handled.

All projects in Research Area D