Research Seminar: New Global Dynamics

How can we study the “global” in the notion of “global multiplicity”? The term global often suggests a unified, static whole. Yet global history, in particular, urges us to approach the global as multiple, fluid, and contested. Drawing on these scholarly debates—which we will introduce to PhD students—we will reconsider our own research projects. The subjects of our work—our actors and interlocutors—relate to the global in diverse ways. Their engagement is not only reactive. They also actively seek to globalize their worlds on their own terms. They rely on historical models to make sense of globalization, but these globalizations are never fixed, but are multiple, unstable, and often in competition.

In this seminar, we will therefore read and discuss texts from critical global studies to reflect on how to approach the global within our projects. This means moving beyond static or reactionary understandings (including those of our actors) and instead engaging critically with the shifting contours of globalization. By doing so, we aim to explore how insights from global studies and global history can illuminate our ongoing research projects in new ways.

► This seminar is open for students of IMPRS and the GSGAS (LU).

Register by 15 April 2026 on Moodle.