Shaping the Humanities

In view of the Arab Spring in the North African region, the cultural sciences are posing new questions. At this time, the analysis of themes such as digital media, culture and public space, as well as culture and conflict are playing a central part in societal and academic discourse. In the future, too, these themes will be relevant in the humanities, cultural and social sciences, above all with a view to processes of individual and collective identity construction.

With the project Scholars in Residence, taking the processes of transformation as point of departure, the Goethe-Institut seeks to promote intercultural dialogue in the area of academic research and to strengthen scientific relations between Germany and the Arabic world on a long-term basis.

During the exchange project, eight next-generation scholars from Egypt, Germany, Morocco and Tunisia will among other things take interdisciplinary approaches to these thematic complexes.

Citizen participation in digital space

The issue of digital space as a new public sphere is arising before the backdrop of political and societal developments in North Africa and the Near East, and in Europe as well. What concrete significance do digital media possess in the context of the political movements in North African Arabic countries – whether for the political organisation of resistance movements or for the development of a new structure of civic communication and public politics?

Transformation of public space

Public space is a constitutive element of societies. It is both a forum encounters as well as a platform for the formation of public opinion. What function did Cairo’s Tahrir Square fulfil during the Arab Spring for the constitution of a critical public? To what extent are public spaces becoming spaces of collective identity? And what transformations of public space took place following the Arab Spring?

"Scholars in Residence" is part of the German-Egyptian and German-Tunisian transformation partnership 2012-2013. The project is an initiative by the Goethe-Institut and being carried out in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KWI) and the Ruhr University Bochum’s Centre of Mediterranean Studies (ZMS). Funded with special grants provided by the German Federal Foreign Office.