The Joint Center for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Elena Meyer-Clement and jointly organized by researchers at universities in Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg, Munich, and Würzburg. The first stage of the project started in November 2020 and will run for 3 years. The Center explores existing notions of “world” and approaches processes of worldmaking from transnational and transcultural perspectives.

At Freie Universität Berlin, the project “Conceptions of world and social practices of worldmaking” is led by Prof. Dr. Elena Meyer-Clement and consists of two sub-projects. The project (A) “A Translingual Conceptual History of Chinese Worlds” scrutinizes the history and global entanglements of Chinese terms and concepts related to world. It analyses which concepts of world particular terms convey, how terms and concepts have moved across linguistic borders, and how the use of terms and their inclusion into new narratives create worlds of their own. This project is led by Visiting Professor Dr. Nicolas Schillinger who replaces Prof. Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn during his leave of absence at the Freie Universität Berlin.

The project (B) “Social worlds: China’s cities as spaces of worldmaking” investigates the political and societal effects of globalization in China’s cities. It analyses China’s urban governance from a global perspective as well as social interaction and communication processes among different groups of actors forming social worlds. This project is led by Prof. Dr. Elena Meyer-Clement in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Björn Alpermann (Universität Würzburg).

In order to promote knowledge exchange, dialogue, and cooperation between Chinese and German scholars, the Center has established a visiting fellowship program for researchers to visit the Center in Germany and a research fellowship program for researchers based at a German university to conduct fieldwork or archival work in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan.

The current Calls for Applications (deadline January 24, 2021) are available here.