Graduate School Global and Area Studies (GSGAS)

The Graduate School Global and Area Studies (GSGAS) at Leipzig University invites young scholars from all over the world to join a fascinating project that is global in scope, and inter- as well as post-disciplinary in its orientation. We are looking for original contributions by excellent PhD candidates from all kinds of area studies, history, and the social sciences as well as international studies, searching for a comprehensive answer to the general question of how societies across the globe react to the dialectics of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. The approach the graduate school is based upon has been developed over the past 20 years. It is unique in its emphasis on a combination of global and transnational history on the one hand, and international, area and transregional studies on the other, including the investigation of commodity chains, international organisations, migration systems, and cultural transfers in the study of critical junctures of globalisation. While deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation are permanently ongoing dialectic processes that are determined by the various global flows and the search for ways to tame them and re-establish sovereignty, there are historical moments when conflicts concerning new spatial frameworks of social interaction and integration actually coincide. We are interested in mechanisms that make the interaction between societies a source for innovation and development, rather than taking societies as containers for granted. However, development doesn't necessarily mean that global inequality will be reduced per se. On the contrary, new spatial frameworks that help in territorialising property, political control, and cultural belonging are introduced in order to increase profits that emerge from growing global exchange. Thus, these frameworks are related to the exercise of power and dominance. Our research is critically engaged with all actors of power relations. Forms of resistance to such a search for hegemony can be observed both on a transnational and a global level, by actors using national institutions and working at the local and regional level.