Freie Universitaet Berlin gets German Research Foundation extension

The German Research Foundation is set to fund the international research training group (IRTG) 2445 “Temporalities of Future in Latin America: Dynamics of Aspiration and Anticipation” based at Freie Universität Berlin for a further four-and-a-half years. The program conducts research on historical and contemporary temporalities of the future in Latin America from different interdisciplinary perspectives in cooperation with three research institutions in Mexico. The historian and spokesperson for IRTG 2445, Professor Stefan Rinke, welcomed the news and highlighted that this will allow the growing interest in studying temporalities in both Latin America and Europe to flourish in cooperation with researchers from Mexico. It will also support the academic careers of over forty early-career researchers.

The IRTG “Temporalities of Future,” a cooperative project between Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam, El Colegio de México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, aims to offer a new perspective on the study of temporalities of the future in the social sciences and cultural studies. In close collaboration with colleagues from different disciplines, it seeks to examine social practices that aim to change social conditions. Its focus lies on the individual actors who produce new temporalities of the future in colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary Latin America.

Twenty-four doctoral candidates are currently carrying out research at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin as part of the IRTG, while four postdoctoral researchers are working on earning their Habilitation, a further academic qualification in Germany for aspiring professors. Research areas include the social dynamics of aspirations and anticipations of various actors with regard to migration and youth culture, educational and gender equity, agriculture and climate change, the historical time regime of different epochs of Latin America, archiving the future, and indigenous temporalities.

The IRTG “Temporalities of Future” is currently the only international research training group of the German Research Foundation to cooperate with Latin American research institutions. Aside from its existing partners, the group also maintains contact with the program “2084 Futuros Imaginados” run by the Observatory on Latin America at the New School in New York and the Latin American Center at Oxford University.