"Zukunftsphilologie" is a research program organized by the Forum Transregionale Studien, which is co-hosted by Freie Universität. The Board of Directors is made up of scholars from Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Heidelberg, and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Zukunftsphilologie supports research in marginalized and undocumented textual practices and literary cultures with the aim of integrating texts and scholarly traditions from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as well as from Europe itself into the canons of textual scholarship.

The program facilitates contact between researchers in Germany and abroad through a postdoctoral fellowship program, the World Philologies Seminar, workshops and discussions, summer/winter schools, and the publication of the peer-reviewed journal Philological Encounters (Brill Verlag) in the spring of 2016.

The World Philologies Seminar has been taking place since 2010 as part of the Zukunftsphilologie research program. According to the organizers, the combination of a thematic introduction in the form of a lecture followed by direct textual analysis and a lively discussion opens the way for the comparison of research approaches of different philosophical traditions without neglecting the particular context of the respective topic under consideration. The current program as well as those of previous semesters can be found here.