The call was addressed to researchers in an early career stage and encouraged them to conceptualize their own transcultural project in view of an individual third party funding application. Applicants were encouraged to critically engage with the Cluster's transcultural perspective, extending it to research fields hitherto not touched by the Cluster. Out of fourteen applications seven proposals were selected for implementation. Three of them have started or will shortly begin their research projects, the other projects will start in 2018.
"Transcultural Forays" builds onto the two funding periods of the Excellence Initiative, in which transculturality has been firmly established as a leading approach for state-of-the-art research in the humanities and social sciences at Heidelberg University. In a variety of research projects the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" and the University’s Field of Focus "Cultural Dynamics in Globalized Worlds" have convincingly argued that transcultural processes are constantly shaping, reconfiguring, or even destroying human societies, thus questioning the common perception of cultures as clearly delineated units.
It is now time to further test the potential of this transcultural approach in new fields – the program "Transcultural Forays" is one of them. The current list of projects in the program ranges from archaeological investigations into the Parthian Empire, or explorations into the ideology of modern Jihad, to studies on literary practices on ships and in ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Find out more about the projects here.
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