Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research

Cultural Research explores cultures as ongoing processes through which humans negotiate how to live in groups, come to a consensus on norms of society and imbue their lives with significance and meaning. If we broaden our gaze beyond the confines of our own world we soon become aware of a complex bundle of transcultural nodes that has expanded through   globalization. We observe how grassroots cultures undergo change and reconfigure as a result of increased mobility, science, the media, resource scarcity, climate change and global inequalities. The political and economic policy landscape also impacts cultural change and draws ourattentiontocultures past, present and future. 

Academic staff and students at the IfEK carry out research projects in a transculturally oriented and empirical Cultural Research tradition. Our work is conceptually orientedto an understanding of cultures in the plural and as “whole ways of life”. It is also closely connected to Ethnography in methods terms, to participant observation and collaborative research, and other qualitative research methods. Research is pursued in a multidisciplinary Cultural Research optic with a clear Social and Cultural Anthropology component. IfEK staff have been developing new forms of research in the framework of collaborative projects such as: Bremen Nature Cultures Lab (BNCL),theBremen Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research (bik) and, jointly with scholars from other  humanities and social science disciplines for the research platform WoC – Worlds of Contradiction.The IfEK is currently preparing contributions to three projects planned for 2020: theGröpelingen Research Laboratory, the Network Institute for Research on Social  Cohesion RSC and (3) the Leibniz Digital Public Health Campus.

In today´s world academic life is characterized by the high degree of mobility of academics transiting between universities, countries, regions and continents. This is as true of the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research at Bremen University as it is elsewhere. Students and colleagues / associates / visiting fellows from various partner universities are able to present their current research work and debate relevant topics with us. Productive long-term partnerships are often the outcome of this lively exchange of concepts and ideas. Students on our courses (BA in Kuwi and MA in Transcultural Studies) gain valuable experience during semesters spent abroad at European and non-European partner universities, and gain exposure to current topical areas in internationally taught Anthropology programs while discovering new research fields.