The Maria Sibylla Merian initiative in Germany: Research cooperation on a truly global scale

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is pursuing its programme to establish SSH research centres in three key regions of the global South, to promote internationalisation and multilateral cooperation of German social science and humanities research.

The initiative is named “Maria Sibylla Merian programme” after the famous naturalist. Each of the centres will be funded for up to twelve years with up to 20 million Euros.

The first such center, the M.S. Merian  – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP), has opened in New Delhi in 2015.

Another one, the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS), is currently being set up at Guadalajara University (Mexico). A third one is to follow in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Sources:

https://www.bmbf.de/de/orte-und-freiraeume-fuer-forschung-743.html (in German)

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-03/bu-nmc030117.php

https://www.bmbf.de/foerderungen/bekanntmachung-1234.html (in German)