The International Research Training Group (IRTG) Diversity proposes an innovative research program in the contested fields of diversity, multiculturalism, and transnationalism by examining paradigmatic changes and historical transformations in interpreting multicultural realities in North America (Québec and Canada in particular) and Europe (Germany and France in particular) since the 18th century. Focusing on dynamic processes that engender diversity, its analytical framework offers new perspectives for transnational and area studies as well as cross‐cultural research. Through the transversal analytic lenses of politics, practices, and narratives, the IRTG investigates the mediation and translation of cultural differences in micro‐, meso‐ and macro‐level empirical constellations, yielding fruitful and innovative topics for doctoral theses. The research‐oriented curriculum, based on regular meetings of the doctoral students and the re-searchers in Trier and Montréal, includes intensive one‐week summer and spring schools, a dissertation workshop with external experts, a mid‐term international conference, and Master Classes addressing core concepts of the research program and their relevance for the individual research topics. These provide doctoral students with the competencies to participate as leading actors in the vibrant international debate on the social, cultural and political linkages between people, places and institutions crossing nation‐state borders and creating local places of diversity. On the theoretical level, the IRTG helps to untangle the conceptual confusions characterizing the current state of debate by contributing an empirically saturated, historicized operationalization of core concepts such as diversity, transculturalism, translation and space. Cooperation with specialists from Canada, and from Québec in particular, is essential to the realization of this ambitious research program. Canada was the first country to introduce an official policy of multiculturalism, making Canada a point of reference for European debates. Aimed in part at defusing Québec nationalism, Canada’s policy elicited immediate political and scholarly criticism in Québec, where alternative concepts such as interculturalism and a counter‐discourse emerged (for a development of these research perspectives see Rocher 1973), anticipating contemporary de-bates in Europe. By integrating Québec into our transatlantic research framework aimed at educating the next generation of Canada’s and Germany’s intellectual elite, the IRTG underscores the fact that ‘diversity’ is a travelling concept embedded in multi‐centered configurations of political, social and academic exchange.
DFG Programme
International Research Training Groups
International Connection
Canada
