Regions of the World
The modern world is characterized by interdependencies between regions. These are investigated at the Center for Area Studies.
Image Credit: Sibel Coşkun
Empirical data are collected in various regions. For example, research is conducted on informal markets in Japan.
Image Credit: Verena Blechinger-Talcott
The Center for Area Studies is a platform for research dealing with the various regions of the world and their multifaceted relations. It supports collaboration in the various fields of area studies at Freie Universität, in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, and worldwide.
News from Jul 22, 2014
Current debates on the global economic crisis, the worldwide protests against authoritarian regimes, migration movements, information flows, and the global challenges of international politics, or the significance of religions illustrate that the modern world is influenced by exchange processes and dependencies between different regions. More knowledge about various regions and interrelations between them is crucial for an understanding many issues.
This is where the Center for Area Studies takes up its work. CAS’s academic purpose is to analyze transcultural phenomena and processes with an interdisciplinary approach. It aims to identify recent research trends in transregional and transcultural studies and to develop and propose new methodological and theoretical discussions within the various area studies.
The Center for Area Studies functions as a supportive network structure. It provides the impetus for interdisciplinary research projects, promotes academic exchange with national and international research institutions, holds lectures, issues its own publications, and organizes various events. CAS and the various area studies research institutes at Freie Universität collaborate with numerous partners in the region, in Germany, and worldwide.
An event format of the Center for Area Studies, the Transregional Studies Salon series, serves as a forum for the discussion of transregional and transcultural ties based on current research results. It is addressed to scholars in the field of area studies as well as to the wider public. This also applies to the regular lecture series devoted to current topics in area studies. In this series approaches from various disciplines are presented and discussed. For the CAS Lecture Cycles, CAS in cooperation with other academic institutions in Berlin invites outstanding thinkers and philosophers who study changes in territorially and culturally defined spaces.
CAS has started a new pilot project to support junior researchers after completion of their doctorate. One part of the project is awarding short-term fellowships for a period of six to nine months for the development and submission of proposals for externally funded postdoctoral projects within area studies or with a regional frame of reference.