DOING COSMOPOLITANISMS: DYNAMICS OF THEORY AND PRAXIS, Expression of Interest Invited from Research Scholars, Delhi Winter School, University of Delhi, Delhi, 6-9 December 2017

During a four-day winter school at the University of Delhi, the Research Training Group (RTG) Minor Cosmopolitanisms will bring together all of its members, as well as selected South Asian MPhil/PhD  scholars to explore practices of cosmopolitanism.

The winter school is a collaborative effort of ongoing joint supervision, research and teaching between the University of Potsdam, partner universities in Berlin, and from around the world (India, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.). Through this we aim to create a learning environment of academic exchange, thereby questioning and overcoming colonial epistemologies.

We are inviting MPhil/PhD scholars from the South Asian region to participate in the winter school, which will involve seminars, keynote lectures, panel discussions, workshops, as well as engagements with activist and artist groups. The overall goal of the RTG, of which the winter school is a part, is to seek ways to transcend the division of the cosmopolitan into either a “universal” (often Eurocentric) normative ideal or an established reality deemed descriptively assessable. We are particularly interested in practices of being, thinking, feeling, and creating in a heterogeneous and unequal world shaped by contemporary processes of globalisation.      

It is in this context that the location of the winter school, outside of the Euro-American context that too often appears as the centre of cosmopolitanism, assumes critical significance. Research scholars from the South Asian region, who would like to participate, should be engaged in research concerning one or more of the following topics:

• contesting colonial epistemologies/ontologies

• dissident democratic formations

• cosmopolitanising bodies

• non-Western readings of the West

• issues of knowledge and piracy

• subaltern and queer femininities

• caste/class/race/religious/gender epistemologies and violence

• eco-cosmopolitan futures

• (minor) convivial cultures and practices

• critiques of (minor) cosmopolitanism(s)

In order to apply, please send us (via email) your CV and a motivation letter of no more than 400 words before 15 September 2017. Funding for accommodation and travel expenses within India can be applied for. We strongly urge PhD candidates from underprivileged backgrounds and minority groups, as well as women to apply.

For more info on the RTG, see www.uni-potsdam.de/minorcosmopolitanisms.html.

Email: delhiwinterschool2017@gmail.com

The Delhi Winter School Organising Team