Researchers from the University of Greifswald land first International Research Training Group in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

[idw]

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved ? 2 million in funding for a group of researchers, led by the historian Prof. Michael North, to establish the International Research Training Group 1540/1 "Baltic Borderlands - Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region" at the University of Greifswald. This International Research Training Group is the first institutionalised PhD training network in Germany to collaborate with a university from one of the Baltic States.





In addition to the University of Tartu in Estonia, the University of Greifswald will also co-operate with Lund University in Sweden to provide an integrated doctoral programme. During the next four and a half years, around 20 doctoral and 5 postdoctoral researchers in Greifswald, Lund and Tartu will conduct research together with their supervisors in several issue areas:


1. the emergence and transformation of historical borderlands;
2. the cultural contexts of cross-border action in borderland areas;
3. the economic permeability and persistence of borders;
4. new border regimes: the political dimension of border formation and dissolution; and
5. the theorisation of synchronic and diachronic processes of change.


Previously, Prof. North and his team had headed the Research Training Group "Contact Zone Mare Balticum: Foreignness and Integration in the Baltic Sea Region" (RTG 619). Established in 2000, this was the first Research Training Group in the field of humanities to receive funding from the German Research Foundation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. "This repeated success" Prof. North emphasizes "reflects the international significance of the research focus on the Baltic Sea region at the University of Greifswald. The International Research Training Group institutionalises transnationally oriented research on the Baltic Sea Region at the University of Greifswald and contributes, likewise, to the integration of research cultures in the region. The establishment of the International Research Training Group "Baltic Borderlands" is a decisive step in the implementation of the European Research Area."


The participating disciplines in Greifswald are History, Baltic and Slavonic Philology, Psychology, Political Science, and Systematic Theology. These are complemented by Ethnology, Geography, Theology and Communication in Lund and Tartu.


Queries can be addressed to
Prof. Dr. Michael North
Historical Institute, University of Greifswald
Domstr. 9a, 17487 Greifswald, Germany
Phone +49 3834 86-3308, Fax +49 3834 86-3305, north@uni-greifswald.de


Weitere Informationen:
- http://www.dfg.de/aktuelles_presse/p...n German only)
- http://www.dfg.de/en/index.html - Ge...undation (DFG)
- http://www.phil.uni-greifswald.de/be...n German only)

Quelle: idw