Käte Hamburger Research Centre Global Dis:Connect

The Käte Hamburger Research Centre “Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation” (global dis:connect), which is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), examines the dynamic, co-constitutive relationship of global integration, absent connections and disintegration in current and historical processes of globalisation. The Centre emphasises the indispensability of the humanities in globalisation research, whose differentiated instrumentarium is required to recognize the social manifestations of processes of globalisation, their cultural contexts and their individual and collective interpretations. As a nationally and internationally prominent location of humanities research, the Centre will enable the humanities to impart, to interpret, and to communicate the complex mechanisms and social significance of past and present globalisation processes beyond the boundaries of particular academic disciplines and in easily accessible terms. Thus, the Centre provides society and political institutions with new tools to better understand and shape processes of globalisation and their meaning for the world we share actively and enduringly. Integrating the arts plays a key role in expanding the established methods of the humanities. Dis:connective phenomena, which are exceedingly elusive, defy quantification and are most notable in their absence, are particularly suited to benefit from the analytical and communicative potential of the arts. The Centre will lay the foundations for concrete forms and means of sustained cooperation between scholarly research and the arts.