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Research Profile
The Graduate School’s main research mission is to produce innovative and original research on Eastern and Southeastern Europe. This means research guided by conceptual and theoretical ambition yet rooted in extensive empirical exploration. One of the more innovative dimensions of our research is the exploration of connections, entanglements and transfers between Eastern and Southeastern Europe and other parts of the world – in line with current debates in Area Studies that highlight the importance of transregional and comparative approaches. For this reason, the Graduate School cooperates closely with the Leibniz ScienceCampus, “Europe and America in the Modern World”. Hereby, we aim to contribute to the development and re-conceptualization of Area Studies.
We are convinced that Eastern and Southeastern Europe are not only interesting regions that deserve scholarly scrutiny in their own right; we also believe that research on this region and its connections with other places generates important insights into the nature of globalization, and how global and transregional connections always lead to place-specific results. Our approach is distinctively multi-disciplinary, which is a traditional asset of Area Studies. We are interested in developments on different scales of social action from the very local to the global, and how these intersect. This perspective is reflected in the composition of our faculty. We pursue exploration into both the past of the region and its present, and want to understand how they are connected. While most of the GS’s projects so far have dealt with the time since the 19th century and the present-day, we are also open to projects exploring the early modern period. The thematic range is wide – highlighting the potential of the region to generate interesting research.
Our research falls into two broad fields:
Projects
Overview of the research projects by our current and former doctoral scholars and postdoctoral researchers. more
Resources
The Graduate School can draw on the excellent library resources in Regensburg. The IOS Regensburg hosts one of the leading research libraries for East and Southeast European Studies, and the University Library has a rich stock of specialised literature. Thanks to the close cooperation with the Bavarian State Library (BSB) in Munich, we enjoy privileged interlibrary loans and Munich is only an 80-minute train ride from Regensburg.