University of Heidelberg

The Centre for European History and Culture (ZEGK) was established in April 2005. It unifies six institutes at Heidelberg University: The Department of History, the Institute of the History of Franconia and the Palatine, the Institute of Religious Studies, the Institute of European Art History, the Department of Musicology and the Department of Eastern European History. The main goal of the Centre for European History and Culture is to increase the cooperation between the institutes, and further, to win interdisciplinary competence within the fields of teaching and research.

The Centre for Studies of the Ancient World (ZAW) was founded in 2004 and houses the Institute for Egyptology, the Department of Ancient History, the Institute for Byzantine Archaeology, the Institute for Classical Archaeology, the Institute for Papyrology and the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory. The underlying concept is based on the idea of culture that is achieved by the abolishment of the traditional frontiers existing between philological, archaeological and historical disciplines. Furthermore, it is based on the comprehension of the ancient time, which includes the ancient orient and Egypt, as well as ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.

The Collaborative Research Centre 619 “Ritual Dynamics” was founded in 2002. It is an interdisciplinary research facility and the world´s largest research association exclusively investigating rituals as well as their change and dynamics. In the current project phase, 21 subprojects are subsumed in three project areas. Over 90 scientists from 15 disciplines, mostly from the field of humanities, collaborate in the SFB 619 at Heidelberg University.  

The South Asia Institute (SAI) was founded in 1962 as an interdisciplinary centre for research and academic teaching on South Asia. It focuses on the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Due to the close philological and historical bond with South Asia, the institute also takes neighbouring countries, such as Afghanistan and regions, such as Tibet into account. As a central academic institution within Heidelberg University, the South Asia Institute today has seven professorships, namely Anthropology, Development Economics, Geography, History, Cultural and Religious History of South Asia (formerly Classical Indology), Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures (formerly Modern Indology), as well as Political Science.