The Centre for East Asian Studies (Zentrum für Ostasienwissenschaften, ZO) is part of the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS), a unique research hub dedicated to exploring Asia within a global and interdisciplinary framework. CATS brings together four institutes at Heidelberg University that share a regional focus on Asia, fostering collaboration across a wide range of academic disciplines such as Anthropology, Geography, History, Cultural Studies, Art History, Literary Studies, Musicology, Religious Studies, Politics, Sociology and others. The ZO has four professorships in Sinology, two each in Japanese Studies and Art History; three additional professorships from the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies are affiliated, along with regular visiting professorships in all three disciplines, and a guest lectureship program specifically focused on the history, culture, and society of Taiwan. Prospective Fellows will join the Junges Kolleg, a newly formed Institute of Advanced Studies.
Fellows will form a learning community together with staff members and local university partners. For this purpose, the Fellows are provided with offices on campus, have access to the local infrastructure of the centre and the university, and engage in dialogue through joint lecture and discussion formats, workshops, conferences, career development initiatives, and knowledge transfer activities.
Catastrophes, as threatening as they are, can also mark the beginning of radical transformations that can lead to new world models. What scope for action emerges from such rethinking? How can crises become catalysts for transformation and change? The JK examines these questions by focusing on changing and threatened environments (e.g., ecological, social, and political) and how they may open up space for creative rethinking and new ways of narrating the future. The JK, thus, brings together fellows whose research spans fields such as the climate crisis, migration, and technological disruption. Forming a part of the JK’s learning community, the fellows take an active role in examining and/or conceptualizing alternative models for actionable futures, drawing on the strengths of the humanities and social sciences.