Organisers

The conference is hosted by SoCuM, the Research Center of Social and Cultural Studies Mainz, and the Research Unit Historical Cultural Sciences at Johannes Gutenberg-University (JGU) Mainz. Initiators of this year’s conference are Stefan Hirschauer (Sociology), Matthias Krings (Ethnology) and Jörg Rogge (History).

Research Center of Social and Cultural Studies Mainz (SoCuM)

The Research Center of Social and Cultural Studies Mainz (SoCuM) promotes interdisciplinary research cooperation between social and cultural sciences at Mainz University. SoCuM does not adhere to a specific research topic, but rather aims to tap into and nurture the considerable potential for innovation that ensues from a sustained network between social and cultural sciences. Interdisciplinary working groups, each with their own topic, develop innovative joint research projects and apply for funding. In addition to the working groups, a group of PhD scholars from various disciplines promotes SoCuM’s interdisciplinary approach among young researchers. SoCuM organizes lectures and workshops relating to the specific research projects developed in the working groups. Every two years, SoCuM arranges an international conference with an innovative and interdisciplinary research topic of both social sciences and cultural sciences, the Mainz Symposia of Social and Cultural Studies. On an annual basis, SoCuM offers a Georg-Forster-Lecture fellowship to excellent and internationally recognized researchers.

Research Unit Historical Cultural Sciences – Forschungsschwerpunkt Historische Kulturwissenschaften (HKW)

The Special Research Unit (FSP) Historical Cultural Sciences at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz is an inter-faculty and interdisciplinary institution for the networking and promotion of empirical cultural studies work with a historical perspective. The research conducted here starts out from a wide cultural concept and emphasises the importance of methodology and theory, precisely for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. Above all, however, the objective of the Research Unit’s measures is not merely typologising or speculative research, but one approaching the actual phenomena, such as is conducted in numerous subjects and associations at the University of Mainz. The specifically historical interest in this connection is derived, on the one hand, from the insight that current phenomena and problem situations have historical roots and only become comprehensible from the same, on the other hand, from the conviction that a contrastive look at different historical epochs and constellations can open up new perspectives, even for familiar cultural phenomena.

Initiators