The University of Cologne aims to continuously further its internationalization in teaching and research. In 2013, UoC launched the International Faculty Programme. Thanks to this programme established researchers at the University may invite cooperation partners from across the world to work with them on projects and to be part of the faculty body for a few weeks during the course of two consecutive academic years. With 18 participants from across the world since 2013 the project has been extremely successful and is a very beneficial give-and-take for both, the international researcher and the university.

We talked to Dana Small, Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Medical School and Deputy Director of the John B  Pierce Laboratory and currently a Member of Research Area on Aging-associated Diseases and Christina Elger, Coordinator of the Programme at the University of Cologne. 

The point of departure for the conference was the phenomenon of migration, which stretches back through human history. Globalization has finally put the relocation of people into international focus and made ethnic identity, belonging, and the handling of national and international policy frameworks highly discussed topics. As the diverse reactions of people and governments to international and internal migration show, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding variations in the political importance of ethnicity – today and in previous historical periods.

The conference attempted to develop a comprehensive understanding of the interrelation of migration, ethnicity and the state by addressing it from three different angles:

1. What role does migration play in the processes of ethnogenesis, and how can we locate diaspora groups within this context, viewed in different regional and historical contexts?

2. Are there clearly discernible ethnic migration patterns and governmental regulations concerning migration?

3. In which ways do governments differentiate between population groups regarding their access to rights and privileges?

Presentations and discussions with scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas opened up profound insights and allowed for intensive exchange in the face of a heterogeneous global picture. The two days of fruitful discussions were completed by a day of excursion in Guangzhou to places linked to the conference topic.

The UoC Forum “Ethnicity” is an interdisciplinary body of researchers promoting inter-institutional and international scientific exchange. Its members are researchers from the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, the Department of Iberian and Latin American History, the Department of African Studies and the Global South Studies Center at the University of Cologne.

Its objective is to strengthen interdisciplinary and international dialogue on the formation of ethnic identities and their use as a political resource, applying a diachronic and comparative perspective. 

The conferences as well as all the other activities of the UoC Forum “Ethnicity” are part of the university’s Institutional Strategy and of the sustained promotion of top-level research that has proven to be very successful.

This year’s conference was a follow-up to the first symposium organized by the UoC Forum “Ethnicity” in Cologne in 2014. The conference “Conceptualizing Ethnicity as a Political Resource – across Disciplines, Regions, and Periods” was the theoretical basis of the meeting in Guangzhou, as theoretical concepts regarding ethnicity, indigeneity and race were addressed from different academic angles. 

Apart from that, the UoC Forum “Ethnicity” organizes workshops, exhibitions and publications with international partners. 

For more information on upcoming or past events, see: www.forum-ethnicity.uni-koeln.de.

Find out more about the UoC’s Institutional Strategy.