University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig has a long tradition of global orientated and culturally comparative historical research and third-level teaching. Since 1990 the University has built upon this tradition with numerous representatives from the humanities and social sciences participating in international research groups. From this basis a structured, doctorate qualification came into being, first in the form of a series of PHD research colloquiums and, since 2001, in the form of an international PHD programme entitled "Transnationalisation and Regionalisation from the 18th century to the present". The programme is coordinated by the Centre of Higher Studies and involves the participation of academics from six different faculties. This programme of research and doctorate study is accompanied by European wide activities, such as the ESF sponsored programme "Representations of the Past: National Histories in Europe", as well as the academic journals "history.transnational/geschichte.transnational" and "Comparativ. Leipzig articles concerning universal history and the comparative study of societies". The latter journal is the organ of the Leipzig coordinated European Network in Universal and Global History, a European association of historians working on questions of global history. With regard to Regional Studies the University of Leipzig has at its disposal an unusually broad spectrum of research areas, with a very positive and advantageous level of cooperation between academics from Cultural Studies and Social Science. Comparative methods and the interweaving of analysis form the basis of this collaboration between specialists on African, Eastern Asian, Western Asian, Latin American, North American, Eastern and Western European Studies. This cooperation is based upon research activities and interaction during the teaching of modular programmes. The central research theme which links the work of academics from various disciplines concerns the spatiality of social and cultural processes and, in reference to the current stage of globalisation, the contemporary process of de- and re-territorialisation. This thematic field incorporates the work of five research groups from the University of Leipzig across the Human Sciences as well as Earth Sciences.
