Concept

The Maurice Halbwachs Summer Institute is conceptualized as an interdisciplinary workshop furthering junior scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It is located in the Lichtenberg Kolleg, the Göttingen Institute for Advanced Studies, located in restored rooms of the royal observatory built originally between 1803 and 1816. Centered around an internationally renowned and intellectually broadly positioned scholar, the Summer Institute offers opportunities to deepen understanding of current research topoi and fields of theory and to discuss innovative methods.

The keynote address of the invited, leading scholar will explore the theme that has been chosen for this annual, week-long event. During the following days, there will be accompanying lectures and roundtables with additional, invited scholars to deepen analytic inroads into theme. In this context, the junior scholars selected from the applicant pool will have ample opportunity to present their own ideas with one another and present their dissertation or postdoc projects in small working groups together with the invited guests and Göttingen scholars. The Summer Institute aims offer new impulses and productive criticism to the junior scholars so as to sharpen the contours of their research projects.

The organizers have chosen to name the Summer Institute after Maurice Halbwachs for a number of reasons. This great French social scientist studied for a year in Göttingen in 1904. His work embodies the kind of intellectual curiosity that radiates into numerous disciplines. The Maurice Halbwachs Summer Institute also seeks to rekindle an interdisciplinary research tradition going back to the time of the university’s founding in the Enlightenment and dynamically build on it, squarely focused on the societal present and future.

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