Since 2014, Freie Universität Berlin has held a strategic partnership with the University of the Western Cape (UWC). UWC was founded in Cape Town during apartheid as a university for the majority Black population and was instrumental in the fight against apartheid. In 2021, the Dahlem Humanities Center and the Centre for Humanities Research der UWC, one of the most important institutions for humanities research in South Africa, established a cooperation. The work of the CHR is strongly influenced by urgent questions that mark life in contemporary South African society. Central research topics are the future of the humanities, human-technology-relations, arts and visual media. 

With this cooperation, the DHC intensifies its thematic focus on sub-Saharan Africa (lectures on the topic can be found in our video library). In addition, the goal is to establish long-term collaborative structures on topics such as post-colonialism, post-apartheid and race, informed by the diversity of humanities disciplines to be found at both universities. The CHR and the DHC plan to establish a larger consortium with leading universities in the humanities from Europe and the United States as well as to conduct joint research programs, colloquia, and funding programs for younger scholars. 

In October 2021, scholars from CHR and members of the DHC came together for a first workshop on the “Future of the University” which took place online. A visit of DHC members in South Africa, initially intended for the first half of 2022, could not be carried out due to the pandemic. 

The cooperation between the DHC and the CHR is part of international networking activities in the humanities, as the DHC is already very successfully pursuing with the University of Zurich. Most recently, this cooperation resulted in the public lecture series “Relevanz? Relevanz! Geisteswissenschaftliche Perspektiven,” the contributions to which are available here.