ScienceCampus Recommends: DIMAS Conference | Sorting and Ordering: Area Studies in the Contemporary World

A flyer with the detailed program can be found here | Poster | Conference homepage

While the multiple societal crises that were often discussed under the label of polycrisis are still evolving in multiple dimensions and are considered to be continued threats to global stability they have since their inception also contributed to new material and ideological realities and realignments. Sorting and ordering provides a framework for examining changes across multiple scalarities, from geopolitical shifts between regions/blocs to the reconfiguration of personal and collective identities in local contexts. The conference invites participants to jointly explore whether new forms of sorting/ordering are taking shape within their areas of expertise and how they potentially relate to larger societal adjustments to new global and local realities.

Through a series of workshops the conference aims at exploring key concepts shaping our local and global environments, including the role of international law, media, the environment, and knowledge production and epistemologies in the Global South.

In dialogue with leading scholars, we will investigate approaches to Area Studies that inform our own research at DIMAS: relating local events and agents to regional and international levels and, conversely, examining the effects of global phenomena on local spaces and personal identities – in real, virtual and imagined spaces.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY, MAY 15

17:00     Registration and opening of the DIMAS exhibition 
18:00     Opening Remarks by UR-President Udo Hebel 
18:15     Susan Hodgett (University of East Anglia): Keynote “The Future of Area Studies in an Era of Global Transformations”
19:00     Roundtable Discussion: Helmut Aust, Julia Bee, Susan Hodgett, and Cassandra Mark-Thiesen in discussion with Anna Steigemann 
20:00     Drinks and Music

FRIDAY, MAY 16 
9:00-10:30     Session 1 
Cassandra Mark-Thiesen (University of Bayreuth) and Timothy Nunan (University of Regensburg): Knowledge Production in the Global South. Print Cultures and Post-Colonial Historiography

11:00-12:30     Session 2 
Helmut Aust (FU Berlin): Disruptions in the Global Order. Is there still a Role for International Law?

12:30-13:30     Lunch break 

13:30-15:00     Session 3 
Julia Bee (Ruhr University Bochum): Climate Divide and Media Climate Justice. Rethinking the epistemic borders and methods of cooperation 

15:00-15:30     Closing observations