Recreating Global History from Asian Perspectives: The Twentieth-Century World in Turmoil

Project abstract:

The aim of this interdisciplinary working group is to create a long-term multilateral network to foster institutionalized research-based graduate education between the three Japanese HeKKSaGOn Universities and the German universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen. It serves as a framework for academically maintaining and developing existing bilateral exchanges in the humanities and social sciences. It furthers joint degree prospects and acts as an incubator for research initiatives of younger scholars. At its membership core is the Heidelberg-Kyoto joint degree relationship in transcultural studies, the Heidelberg-Tohoku double doctoral degrees as well as the Heidelberg-Osaka exchanges in Asian and Japanese Studies. Multilateral HeKKSaGOn activities will be encouraged through this project application. We need steady funding streams from multiple sources and administrative support for institutionalized innovations in the kind of collaborations that university leadership advocates but there may be problems in reality. The members of the Asian and Transcultural Studies group already have had substantial experience of international and interdisciplinary cooperation together so the emphasis now is on keeping binational education alive and finding new joint academic themes with and for the next generation of scholars. The key proposed activity will be an annual graduate student workshop alternating between Japanese universities (uneven years) and Heidelberg (even years). Kyoto University’s annual Next Generation Global Workshop, which started in 2008, inspired this model as well as the doctoral workshop of the European Association of Japanese Studies. These regular workshops would be open to graduate students from all HeKKSaGOn universities and their core partners, which cooperate with us in Asia and Europe. However, core university funding would be limited to members of the HeKKSaGOn universities.

Lead coordinator:

Name: Akita, Shigeru
Position: Professor of History
Institution: Osaka University
Department, Faculty: Head of Department of World History, Graduate School of Letters

Other coordinator(s):
 

Name: Fuess, Harald (Mr.)
Position: Professor of Cultural Economy
Director of the Heidelberg Graduate School for Humanities and Social Science (HGGS)
Director of the Centre of Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS)
Director of the Heidelberg Centre of Transcultural Studies (HCTS)
Director of the Heidelberg/Kyoto Joint M.A. Degree in Transcultural Studies
Director of the Working Group in Korean Studies
Institution: Heidelberg University
Department, Faculty: Heidelberg Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Faculty of
Philosophy