Foundations of Refugee Research

• Applicant: Dr. J. Olaf Kleist, since 1/2016
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270107948

In the last 30 years, research about flight, forced migration and asylum has established an interdisciplinary field. Considering an often practical outlook, ethical challenges and the necessity, to settle on shared terms and concepts across disciplines, foundational research has been neglected. In Germany moreover, refugee research is still in its early stages despite the societal pertinence of its topic. Relevant studies about forced migration, which should relate to each other, as well as researchers working on these issues remain all too often isolated.The Scientific Network Foundations of Refugee Research brings together 14 researchers, from postdoctoral researchers to Professors, in six workshops to discuss continuously challenges that are brought up in refugee research by principle terms and concepts, interdisciplinarity, the relationship of theory and practice, political processes of negotiation and frameworks of analysis, as well as by normativity and ethics. The aims of the network include the publication of a handbook on foundations of refugee research, the development of individual and collaborative research projects with international impact as well as the establishment of long-lasting scientific structures for a permanent interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of refugee research.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Marcel Berlinghoff, until 12/2015