Workshops

The workshop is organized by the Ghent University Russia Platform and the University of Tartu and addresses the question what kind of power applies to Russia. In doing so, it seeks to offer a platform for interdisciplinary discussions around different conceptualizations of power in the domestic and foreign relations of contemporary Russia.

Given the multiple research questions that the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis have opened up in relation to Russia’s power, the call for papers now also welcomes papers that deal with topics relating to the effects and implications of the current pandemic and crisis for Russia’s power, such as the new understanding of hybrid threats, Russian ‘health diplomacy’, disintegrative trends in the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union, COVID-19’s impact on the situation in eastern Ukraine, domestic decentralization within Russia and the new situation for Russophone communities in the Baltic states.

On the 24th and 25th of September 2020, a postgraduate workshop will take place at the University of Tartu, Estonia on the following topic: Interactions between German studies and neighboring disciplines. The workshop as part of a doctoral school funded by the DAAD would like to evaluate and explore the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary work in German studies by looking at specific projects. (Post) PhD students from all philologies and humanities are invited, who engage in interdisciplinary interactions with German studies in their projects.

The workshop 'The Influences of Motivation and Emotion on Visual Processing' brought together junior and senior researchers in cognitive psychology and neuroscience from Göttingen (host), Groningen and Ghent, as well as a number of external speakers and PhD students from six other universities world-wide.

The two-day workshop was focused on the work-in-progress of PhD students and Postdocs who presented and discussed their findings, in order to get further input by their peers and the participating senior scientists. 

Since 2018 members of the U4Society network have been working together on intensifying the cooperation with higher education institutions in Africa, and subsequently established the U4Society Africa Initiative in the course of 2019 with the aim of enhancing the joint collaboration with African HEIs. 

On on June 5, 2019 staff members of Ghent, Göttingen and Groningen have met together with African PhD students from the participating institutions in the framework of a workshop on African-European Cooperation on occasion of the Groningen lustrum conference. Ms. Beth Yoder (University of Groningen), expert on intercultural relations, prepared a tailored-made workshop addressing themes such as 'what is cultural identity', 'how to visualize culture' and 'how to build trust in an international, intercultural setting'.

The workshop 'Concepts and Tools in Cultural Transfer Research. Case: Travel Writing' took place in Göttingen on 16-17 of May. The workshop was organised by the Cultural Transfer Research Group, which was initiated by Petra Broomans in Groningen.

In this fourth edition of the workshop Barbara Schaff, Professor for English Philology at the University of Göttingen and Petra Broomans organised four panels that each focused on a different topic. The panels illuminated theoretical connection between concepts of cultural transfer and the genre of travelling literature as well as highlighted the importance of concepts of identity in cultural exchange and another focused on the performative and literary aspects of cultural exchange in literary pieces on travels to Scandinavia in the 18th to 20th century.

In the framework of the 'Taiwan Chair' the Centre for Modern East Asian Studies at Göttingen hosts the workshop 'Towards a New Global Order? Ambitions, Scope and Challenges of China’s Belt and Road Initiative' with the aim of exploring the complex entanglements between the BRI and China’s changing role in the global political economy.

Guiding questions during the workshop will be: How to assess the motives and challenges of the BRI as a new development strategy in the context of slowing growth rates and overcapacity problems in the Chinese economy? What are the responses to the BRI by stakeholders in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Europe? And what are the implications of the BRI for international relations and China’s ascent to a global superpower?

As an explicitly transcultural genre premised on encounter and exchange, travel writing provides ample opportunities for the study of cultural transfer across the centuries. As diverse as the forms and purposes of travel writing are – covering reports of exploratory journeys, scientific expeditions, pilgrimages, educational tours, or leisure trips – they all involve the acquisition, processing and mediation of cultural knowledge. However, contemporary studies in the fields of intercultural transfer and exchange (Lüsebrink 2005, Greenblatt 2010) have pointed out the instability and contingency of any cultural transaction. In addition, discursive constructions of the self and the other are shaped by particular ideological, aesthetic, gendered, social and institutional contexts (Leerssen et al. 2007).

In the framework of the Ghent-base project 'Established and Emerging Methods: Uses and Variation', a two-day seminar was organized with the main emphasis on qualitative research methods, both established and emerging, as undertaken by doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and senior professors. The seminar involved academics from three of the U4 universities: Ghent, Uppsala and Groningen.

The aim of the seminar was two-fold. On the one hand it sought to produce an inventory of practices and approaches in qualitative research across U4 universities. On the other hand, it aimed at generating a scientific community between researchers, upon which a long-term collaboration can be built.

In the framework of the U4 Taiwan Studies network a 2nd workshop was hosted by Groningen on 31 May and 1 June 2018, focusing on the theme: 'EU foreign policy and the response from East Asia'.

The workshop was centered around four main topics: (1) political developments and EU-East Asia Relations, (2) governing economic relations between the EU and East Asia, (3) normative power Europe and East Asia, and (4) the EU and China: policies and normative stance.

In late April, the Faculty Office for Humanities and Social Sciences, Uppsala University, visited Göttingen University. The aim of the visit, which was initiated by Uppsala but generously planned and arranged by the Göttingen hosts, was to contribute to the Uppsala office's continuous work for enhanced internationalization and quality.

During two intensive days of inspiring meetings and discussions between the two U4 partners, the Uppsala office had the opportunity to meet with various representatives and offices of Göttingen University, particularly related to the humanities, social sciences, theology and teacher education.