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General research projects run 3-years and tackle topics cutting across SCRIPTS’ Research Units and involve principal investigators, junior researchers and external partners. General Research projects are funded by SCRIPTS.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Berger, Prof. Dr. Anna Holzscheiter, Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse
Sep 01, 2022 — Aug 31, 2025
Project Description The project examines how representatives of the Global South have engaged with liberal ideas in debates over human rights, both historically and in contemporary institutional settings. Instead of narrowing them down to their liberal enunciation, this approach treats human ...
Prof. Dr. Philipp Lepenies, Prof. Dr. Marianne Braig, Prof. Dr. Gülay Çağlar, Prof. Dr. Andreas Eckert, Prof. Dr. Jessica Gienow-Hecht
Nov 01, 2022 — Aug 31, 2025
Museums are places in which artefacts or artworks are publicly exhibited. Museums constitute a specific “scene.” Objects play the role of “actors” and interpret specific “plots.” Visitors are guided by a “script” that deliberately captures and directs their attention into ...
Prof. Dr. Lora Anne Viola
Project Description The project “Race and Multilateralism” (RAM) studies the ways that multilateralism, an institutional form of cooperation central to the liberal international order, has been implicated in creating, recreating, or overcoming the racialised nature of that order. It ...
Prof. Dr. Genia Kostka, Prof. Dr. Alexander Libman
The project analyzes the construction of ‘alternative’ narratives by authoritarian governments competing against the liberal script and the way these narratives are perceived, reinterpreted and negotiated by the population of their countries. We focus at Russia and China and the narratives ...
Prof. Dr. Tanja A. Börzel, Prof. Mattias Kumm, S.J.D. (Harvard), Prof. Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach, External research collaborators: Prof. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua , School of Law, University of Ghana Prof. Andrés Bernasconi , Faculty of Education, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Prof. Hualing Fu , Department of Law, University of Hong Kong
Sep 01, 2021 — Jan 31, 2025
Academic freedom, both as an individual right and in the form of institutional autonomy, is under pressure in many countries across the world, as the Academic Freedom Index shows. Examples of attacks include the closure of institutions, funding cuts to specific research programs, prohibitions of ...
Prof. Dr. Gülay Çağlar, Prof. Dr. Yasemin Soysal, Prof. Dr. Kathrin Zippel
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are sites of deep contestations over key values of the liberal script. Access to inclusion, resources, and power in the HE system is based on the ideal of meritocratic principles, but academic excellence is often constructed in ways that position democratic values of equality and diversity in opposition or in non-compliance with meritocracy. While universities have long been a bastion of training (national) elites and knowledge production, the liberalisation and democratisation of Western societies in particular since the 1960s led to the expansion of higher education. This was based on the proposition that an inclusive higher education (HE) is the foundation of an economically prosperous and democratic society. Since then, higher education systems should not only produce knowledge but also contribute to equality and diversity. "Diversity scripts" reflect debates over what counts and does not count as diversity and how it should be taken into account. Diversity scripts are defined as the ways in which ideals of pluralism, equality, inclusion, and participation are conceptualized in the context of higher education. The project seeks to theorize “varieties of diversity scripts” to explore the different tensions and contestations of equality and meritocracy in HE.
Prof. Dr. Katharina Bluhm, Prof. Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse
The project investigates authoritarian contestations of an important vehicle of liberal values – the open Internet – as well as of the liberal script in the domain of governance of the Internet and digital economy. It examines the models of “sovereign” Internet and “sovereign” digital ...
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Gerhards, Prof. Dr. Steffen Mau , Prof. Dr. Marianne Braig
Oct 01, 2019 — Sep 30, 2022
Project Description In the past years, the number of refugees and asylum seekers has increased substantially across the world. This has increased the pressure on destination countries to open up their borders to those seeking protection. The project aimed to understand how the admission or ...
Prof. Dr. Jessica Gienow-Hecht , Prof. Dr. Marianne Braig , Prof. Dr. Gülay Çağlar
Oct 01, 2020 — Sep 30, 2023
Project Description The project “Gender, Borders, Memory” (GBM) aimed to understand the role and influence of gender and memory within border contestations of the liberal script. We examined the extent to which gender and history condition border definitions and border contestations in ...
Prof. Dr. Anette Fasang
Aug 07, 2020 — Aug 06, 2023
The research project investigates the demographic, historical and sociological conditions of Senegal that may give rise to contestations of the liberal script, particularly by its young adults. Many post-colonial countries in Africa have followed the liberal script – implementation of democracy, free markets, and expanded education – yet have failed to achieve the liberal promises of meritocracy and prosperity. Such failed promises may lead to disillusioned youths that question the liberal script, resulting often in emigration that in turn threatens the borders and stability of the destination liberal democracies.
Prof. Dr. Amrita Narlikar , Prof. Mark Hallerberg, PhD, Prof. Dr. Slava Jankin
Sep 01, 2021 — Aug 31, 2024
Project Description This project investigated the key decision-makers during the pandemic, focusing on leaders, health ministers, and finance ministers, and the narratives they employed. The inclusion of health and finance ministers is crucial, as much of the political and public debate during ...
Prof. Dr. Matthias Kumm, Prof. Dr. Stefan Gosepath
Jan 01, 2020 — Dec 31, 2023
Liberal orders are open to difference, pluralism and disagreement. Compared to a wide range of historical antecedents and contemporary competitors liberalism is inclusive. But liberalism also imposes limits on the kind of difference, pluralism and disagreement that is deemed legitimate. In that sense, liberalism is also exclusionary. In a series of colloquia and articles, this project explores the boundaries of liberalism with regard to it inclusionary and exclusionary dimension, focusing on basic constitutional doctrines (e.g. the limits of constituent and amendment power, militant constitutionalism and the right to resist) and its construction of legitimate authority.
Prof. Dr. Florian Waldow , Prof. Dr. Tobias Berger , Prof. Dr. Marcelo Caruso
Feb 01, 2021 — Feb 14, 2024
Project Description In this project, we aimed to analyse how visions of the future of education are negotiated and contested, looking at how narratives about the future of education are constructed by UNESCO and OECD in two projects, Futures of education (UNESCO) and Future of education and ...
Prof. Dr. Tanja A. Börzel, Prof. Dr. Michael Zürn , Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse
Apr 01, 2021 — Mar 31, 2024
In the context of the Cluster’s internationalization strategy and in cooperation with the Cluster’s 21 international partners, SCRIPTS has the ambition to “bring the cluster to the world” in the different regions in the world. In this context, we realise the format of “regional ...
Prof. Dr. Johannes Giesecke , Prof. Dr. Heike Klüver, Prof. Dr. Martin Kroh
Aug 01, 2019 — Aug 31, 2022
Project Description This project examined the combined roles of socioeconomic inequality, migration, and populist-party rhetoric in the rise of European populist protests. The hypothesis proposed that extremist parties, in their efforts to mobilise voters, have exploited (perceived) inequalities ...
Prof. Mark Hallerberg, PhD, Prof. Dr. Amrita Narlikar
Oct 01, 2020 — Mar 31, 2024
Project Description This project examined the implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for the liberal script, with a focus on trade and finance. These two policy areas are crucial in assessing the potential re-allocation of wealth across borders driven by the BRI. Research Questions ...
Prof. Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse, Prof. Dr. Christian Volk, Dr. Sabine von Löwis
Oct 01, 2020 — Aug 31, 2024
Project Description The aim of this study, located between geography, political science and anthropology, is to analyse different challenges to the liberal script in border regions, in particular with regard to sovereignty, mobility and individual vs. group rights. The case of Ukraine offers an ...
Prof. Dr. Stefan Gosepath, Prof. Dr. Michael Zürn
Oct 15, 2019 — Oct 14, 2023
Project Description The research project ‘Towards a Typology of Contestations’ (TTC) aims to construct a typology of contestations of the liberal script that takes the diversity of current contestations on a global scale into consideration. The analysis considered over 30 features of 53 ...
Prof. Dr. Tobias Berger, Prof. Dr. Philipp Dann
Project Description The project analysed non-liberal conceptualizations of social transformation and their relationship to the liberal script in India. It focused on the concept of transformative constitutionalism (TC) as a central site for the articulation of a non-liberal vision of (future) ...
