Our Institute

INPUTS interrogates global colonial and postcolonial social and cultural constellations, from transcultural and decolonial perspectives

‘Postcolonialism’ points to an awareness and a condition, which still influences everyday life of the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ due to marks and effects of colonial history. Colonization, in this context, takes on the characteristics of world historic events whose impact have persisted to this day, or better, are being reproduced time and again. We apply critical approaches of post- and decolonial studies that transgress the boundaries and possibilities of the national-linguistic and the national cultural-academic constitutions of the disciplines. We practice international cooperation at ‘eye-level’ which recognizes epistemological agency beyond, and outside the Western academy.

The institute deals with the colonial past, with postcolonial agency and independence, and with hybrid culture and identity constructions, in historical and contemporary perspectives on globalization. Hence, we focus on the following key areas: Franco-, anglo-, hispano- and lusophone cultures and literatures of Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Pacific.