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Research Projects: Ongoing

Graduiertenkolleg 2661 „anschließen-ausschließen“

Graduiertenkolleg 2661 „anschließen-ausschließen“

Support: DFG
Cooperation Partners: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Technischen Hochschule Köln

Project management: Prof. Dr. Sandra Kurfürst, Prof. Dr. Martin Zillinger, et. al.

Website: https://www.anschliessenausschliessen.de/

Duration:
October 2021 to March 2026.

Das transdisziplinäre Graduiertenkolleg untersucht Praktiken des Anschließens und Ausschließens. In globalisierten Netzwerken gilt Anschlussfähigkeit als wesentliche Voraussetzung von Teilhabe. Das Kolleg interessiert sich für die ‚andere Seite‘ von Anschlussprogrammen in den Netzwerken von Medien, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik, Recht, Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur und fragt nach den Ausschlüssen, die mit den in globalisierten Netzwerken gängigen Praktiken des Anschließens einhergehen. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen stehen Praktiken lokaler Partikularisierung, die sich über das Ideal einer globalen Standardisierung und Vernetzung hinaus nachweisen lassen und somit jenseits landläufiger national-kultureller Grenzmarkierungen und a priori definierter historischer Perioden entstehen, welche für unterschiedliche Konzepte der Moderne maßgeblich sind.

Dazu bringt das GRK die Disziplinen der Kunst-, Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften zusammen mit der Philologie, Ethnologie, den kulturvergleichenden Fächern und der künstlerischen und gestalterischen Praxis. Es versammelt Expertisen für europäische, ost- und südostasiatische, nord- und südamerikanische sowie subsaharisch afrikanische und arabische Beobachtungsräume der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte. Mit der Analyse divergierender Kulturkonzepte und begrifflicher Konstruktionen hinsichtlich der lokalen Praktiken des (sich) Anschließens und des (sich) Ausschließens wird eine neue transdisziplinäre Methodik zur Betrachtung des Wechselverhältnisses von Beteiligung und Dissidenz erprobt. Diese ist auf ein prozessuales Handeln und auf Dialogizität ausgelegt. Im Vergleich von historischen Wandlungsprozessen und unterschiedlichen globalen, regionalen und lokalen Räumen führt das zu Fragen der Macht, der Teilhabe, der Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung sowie der fragmentarischen Wahrnehmung und symbolischen Narrativierung von Welt.

ERC Advanced Grant

ERC Advanced Grant "Rewilding the Anthropocene"

Human-Animal Assemblages in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area

Support: European Reserach Counil (ERC)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig
Staff: Lèa Lacan
Website: https://www.rewilding.de/

Duration
Funding Phase: 2022- 2027 ( 5 years) | Budget: 2.490.285 €

African Climate and Environment Center - Future African Savannas (AFAS)

African Climate and Environment Center - Future African Savannas (AFAS)

Support: DAAD
Cooperation Partners: ZEF (University of Bonn), ICCA (University of Nairobi, Kenya), CEA-CCBAD (Université de Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig, Dr. Gerda Kuiper

Website: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/en/the-center/african-climate-and-environment-center-future-african-savannas-afas

Duration
Funding Phase: 2021- 2025 (5 years) | Budget: 2.8 Mio €

Conflict-Induced Displacement and Socio-Economic Resilience: Learning From Neglected Conflicts in Cameroon and Myanmar

Conflict-Induced Displacement and Socio-Economic Resilience: Learning From Neglected Conflicts in Cameroon and Myanmar

International Research Cluster 2023/24

Support: Cologne International Forum, Universität zu Köln
Cooperation Partners: University of Bamenda, Chulalongkorn University Bangkok

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michaela Pelican

Website: https://cif.uni-koeln.de/projects/international-research-cluster-2023-24-michaela-pelican

Duration:
2023-2024 / Budget 70.000 EUR

There are an estimated 281 million migrants worldwide, with 89.5 million being forcibly displaced. Political and humanitarian measures to address forced migration often neglect the socio-economic aspects of displacement. Understanding migrants’ socio-economic situations is essential to managing forced migration and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. At the heart of this project are two violent conflicts – the Anglophone conflict in Cameroon and the military coup in Myanmar – which have resulted in significant displacement but have received limited attention in international public debates.

FOR 5183 | Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics

FOR 5183 | Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: Univ. Siegen

Website: https://for5183.uni-siegen.de/?lang=en

This Research Unit brings together scholars from sociology, anthropology and political science in order to examine the nexus between transborder mobility and institutions from a transregional and transnational perspective that extends beyond European host countries. It aims to explore the ways in which institutions frame, shape or control mobility (especially labour migration, educational migration and forced migration) and considers the influence of these forms of mobility on institutional endurance or change.

Building on five closely intertwined subprojects, the particular focus of the Research Unit’s theoretical and empirical analyses are the institutional dynamics – i.e. processes of institutionalisation, de- and re-institutionalisation and institutional pluralisation – that accompany transborder mobility and the mechanisms of internal and external institutional regulations of mobility.

FOR 5183 | Migration, Intersectionality and Institutional Interaction: Experiences of African Migrants in the United Arab Emirates

FOR 5183 | Migration, Intersectionality and Institutional Interaction: Experiences of African Migrants in the United Arab Emirates

Subproject 3 within FOR 5183 Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: Univ. Siegen

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michaela Pelican
Staff: Saleh Seid Adem
Website: https://for5183.uni-siegen.de/sub-projects-overview/sub-project-3/?lang=en

Duration
Funding Phase: 2022- 2026 | Budget Subproject: 375.404 Euro

This project examines the interplay between international mobility and institutional dynamics in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It pursues an intersectional approach and aims to understand how migrants and institutional actors are positioned differently, how their interaction is shaped by different vectors of inequality, and how they make use of their positionalities. The project focuses on institutions of migrant self-organisation and considers the kafala/sponsorship system - widespread in the Arab Gulf region - not only in terms of its restrictive dimensions but also in terms of how migrants productively incorporate it into their strategies. The project focuses on migrants from Africa (specifically from Ethiopia and Cameroon), a group that has received little attention in previous research on the Arab Gulf states. Methodologically, it integrates anthropological and sociological approaches and uses a mixed methods design, which includes, among other things, auto-ethnography as a central method for researching intersectionality.

 

Sozialanthropologie und China

Sozialanthropologie und China

Ko-Konstruktionen von ethnographischen und akademischen Regionen

Support: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Project management: Prof. Dr. Susanne Brandtstädter

Duration:
Funding Phase 11/2021 - 10/2024 (3 years) | Budget: 57.091 €

VW - Research Unit

VW - Research Unit "The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities"

Global contexts and concepts of labour exploitation

Support: Volkswagen Foundation

Website: https://socialinequalities.uni-koeln.de/

Project partners: Michaela Pelican (University of Cologne, project lead), Tu Huynh (Jinan University, Guangzhou), Meron Eresso (Addis Ababa University), Ulrike Lindner (University of Cologne)

Duration:
Funding Phase: 2020-2024 (48 month) | Budget 1.258.900 €

The starting point for this project is a very specific conundrum: Why have attempts at increasing equality often contributed to generating more durable inequalities? To shed some light on this question, this research focuses on concepts and actors and their roles in producing and reproducing social inequalities in the context of colonial and postcolonial labour systems and regimes of mobility in the "Global South". In this study, inequalities are understood as relational and historically embedded and as comprising several dimensions, including social, economic, and epistemic inequality. More specifically, the project team focuses on selected concepts that are locally grounded and describe forms of social inequalities linked to different types of labour exploitation, namely "native labour", "new slavery", "human trafficking", and "cheap/abundant labour". The team members investigate - both from a historical and contemporary perspective - how these concepts circulated on a global scale, and were negotiated, translated, and adapted by institutional and individual actors with the aim of challenging social inequalities, while eventually contributing to the production of those same, or new, inequalities. The project intends to reconcile debates on conceptual history, labour history, and inequality and combines perspectives from both South and North. Ultimately, it aims to interpret global labour regimes and to draw lessons from experiences for societies in both the “Global South” as well as the “Global North”.

VW - Research Unit

VW - Research Unit "Special Project on COVID-19"

Communication during and after COVID-19: (re)producing social inequalities and/or opportunities among African migrants in the United Arab Emirates and China

Support: Volkswagen Foundation

Project management: Dr. Jonathan Ngeh, Prof. Dr. Michaela Pelican, Prof. Dr. Tu Huynh

Website: https://socialinequalities.uni-koeln.de/covid-19-project

Duration
Funding Phase: 2020-2023  | Budget: 117.600 €

The key questions in this proposed research are: How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect the production and reproduction of social inequalities as well as the emergence of opportunities for especially vulnerable migrants? And which role does communication play in this context? These questions will be studied in relation to the experiences of African migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and in China. In addition to showing the pandemic’s differential socio-economic impact on different populations in society, the findings will reveal how solidarity at the grassroots level underlies the successful mitigation of this crisis in at-risk communities. The main impact of the study will lie in translating the findings into practical suggestions on how to improve communication with and within vulnerable migrant communities so as to strengthen their resilience in view of the ongoing pandemic and future crises.

SFB/TR 228 - Future Rural Africa

SFB/TR 228 - Future Rural Africa

Future-Making and Social-Ecological Transformation (Collaborative Research Centre SFB TR 228)

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: University of Bonn, Dep. of Geography

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig, Prof. Dr. Detlef Müller-Mahn, University of Bonn

Website: https://crc-trr228.de/

Duration
1. Funding Phase: 2018-2022 (4 years) | Budget: ca. 9 Mio €
2. Funding Phase: 2022-2025

 

SFB TR 228  | A04 Future Conservation

SFB TR 228 | A04 Future Conservation

Towards an African Eden? Shifting bio-cultural frontiers and the (re)coupling of social-ecological relations in the conservation areas

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig
Staff: Dr. Hauke-Peter Vehrs, Lacan, Léa M.A.
Website: https://crc-trr228.de/a04-future-conservation/

Duration
1. Funding Phase: 2018-2022 (4 years) | Budget Sub-Project: 485.100 €
2. Funding Phase: 2022-2025 |

SFB 1187 | B04 Digital Publics and Social Transformation in the Maghreb

SFB 1187 | B04 Digital Publics and Social Transformation in the Maghreb

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: University of Siegen

Project management: Prof. Dr. Martin Zillinger, Prof. Dr. Volker Wulf, Dr. Markus Rohde
Staff: Dr. Nina ter Laan, Simon Holdermann, Konstantin Aal, Dr. Peter Tolmie, Sara Rüller
Website: https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en/projects/b04/

Duration
Funding Phase: since 2016

Emmy Noether Program | DELTA

Emmy Noether Program | DELTA

Volatile Waters and the Hydrosocial Anthropocene in Major River Deltas

Support: Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Association

Project management: Prof. Dr. Franz Krause
Staff: Benoit Ivars, Nora Horisberger,
Website: http://delta.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/

Duration
Funding phase: 2016-2021 (60 months); Budget: 1.358.375 €

Future-Making, Environmental Change and Socio-economic Transformations in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Future-Making, Environmental Change and Socio-economic Transformations in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Staff: David Meschede, M.A.,
Website: http://futuremakingkalimantan.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/41490.html?&L=1

Duration:
Funding Phase: 2019-2022 (36 months) | Budget: 226.830 €

Processes of rapid and profound social and environmental change characterize the remaining rainforest areas of Indonesia. We explore these transformations as manifestations of future making und place the aspirations of local actors at centre stage. Future making refers to the ways in which visions and expectations of the future inform action in the present und how consequently the future is produced in the present.

Taking East Kalimantan as a point of departure, we study practices of future making in an interplay of numerous actors, various interests, and institutional settings linked across manifold scales. We explore diverse visions of the future and values linked to aspirations for a “better” life. Furthermore, we investigate how visions of the future are expressed, in which temporal and spatial frames of reference they are placed and how they are translated into practice.

NamTip: Social and Cultural Implications of Desertification Tipping Points in the Namibian East Communal Rangelands

NamTip: Social and Cultural Implications of Desertification Tipping Points in the Namibian East Communal Rangelands

Sub-Project 3 of BioTip. Understanding and Managing Desertification Tipping Points in Dryland Social-Ecological Systems

Support: BMBF

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig, Dr. Diego Menestrey Schwieger

Website: https://www.namtip.uni-bonn.de/

Duration
Funding Phase: 2019-2022 (36 months) | Budget Sub-Project: 333.366 €