Former stratetic research areas

This cluster explores the relationship between somatic experiences and individual ethical outlook. The main underlying questions the cluster is asking are a) how particular somatic experiences and individual ethical orientations affect one another, b) what concrete processes are at play in this relationship, c) what role senses play in it, and d) what the relationship is between such “somato-ethics” and the broader collective moral schemas.

This open cluster is conceived as a space for interested researchers to think together through the lens of research beyond their own specialization to inspire new ideas. Our aim is to identify the areas where otherwise seemingly distinct research projects at ToRS can cross-fertilize. This is not only in order to enhance our understanding of singular case studies and the overall processes shaping ethical outlooks, but also to increase the theoretically productive synergy between the different study areas at the department.

Coordinator: Beata Świtek

Period: January 2021 – December 2022.

The aim of this cluster is to explore digitalization as a research object and a method at Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (ToRS). We will explore the usefulness of digital methods in our research and the implications of the increased digital mediation of our social and cultural world. The main purpose is to bring together existing ToRS research on digitalization and to create a momentum for this kind of research at the departmental level. By creating awareness of and building capacities related to digitalization, we also expect a number of positive spillover effects, such as an increased number of publications on digitalization and research applications involving digital methods as well as an increased use of digital methods and studies of digitalization in teaching. We also aim to make suggestions to ToRS management, ToRS committees and ToRS colleagues regarding the possibilities for integrating digitalization and programming in research and teaching.

Coordinators: Bo Ærenlund Sørensen

Period: January 2021 – December 2022.

Bringing together scholars from several of the department's study areas, in this cluster we wish to approach aesthetic products from an interdisciplinary area-studies perspective, focusing on literature as our primary example of knowledge production imbued with aesthetic significance. Being predicated on a specific area and language proficiency, language-based area studies are concerned with the application of a vast number of theories. Theories pertaining to culture and politics naturally predominate, while the aesthetic aspects of cultural production and products are rarely touched upon explicitly.

Our ambition is to explore and identify a whole range of relevant approaches to literature in language-based area studies, and to focus on works of literature as meaningful beyond their specific historical and cultural contexts, in order to include these existential and transcendent reflections in our understanding of the cultures and languages we study.

Coordinators: Tine Roesen and Anita Pluwak

Period: August 2019 - January 2021

The aim of this open cluster is to bring together researchers, students and external partners in a common exploration of cultural, social, economic and political dynamics of resources. This focus turns our analytical attention towards materials, energy, services, staff, knowledge, or other material and immaterial assets that are creatively transformed to produce benefits and in this process may be utilized, consumed, hoarded, remade, turned scarce or depleted – all with significant consequences for societies, local, regional as well as global.

The cluster wants to investigate how questions and conflicts associated with resource knowledge regimes, infrastructures, development, risk and security etc. are linked to particular imaginaries, and forms of sociality, emotions, ideologies, policies, moral economies, place- and people-making, exploitation practices and entrepreneurship.

Coordinator: Frank Sejersen

Period: August 2019 - January 2021

The Food Matters cluster engages in research of all aspects relating to food, including religious, material, social, political and economic questions.  The different research activities carried out over the course of recent years have already shown the advantage of a cross-disciplinary approach to this particular topic. The themes studied within this cluster will include taste (the growing importance of insects, the cultural change in taste through time as evidenced by ancient recipes), health and nutrition, movement of foods (e.g. chillies, ‘German’ potatoes, Greek symposia and Indian food), the role food plays in identity construction, and negative food (memory and bad taste). Members of the cluster have already been involved in research concerning food origins, the role of commensality, the relation between food and identity, as well as food and its economic and social role.

The humanities should make a more prominent contribution to the study of foods, past and present, since much research has been dominated by scientific approaches that mostly focus on nutritional or health aspects. The humanities, however, highlight the varied cultural influences on food making and consumption that influence food choice and processing. Food Matters adds a wider regional and diachronic perspective as well as more diverse perspective on food. The group is open to more members, who might want to join the cluster for all or only certain activities.

In February 2020 an international workshop with 12 speakers and over 25 participants with the title “Food and Drink in Feasting” was held successfully at the University of Copenhagen.

Coordinators:  Susanne Kerner and Morten Warmind

Period: August 2019 - January 2022.