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About ICAS:MP

The M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies: ‘Metamorphoses of the Political: Comparative Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century’ (ICAS:MP) is an open, interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange. Located in New Delhi it critically intervenes in global debates within the social sciences and humanities. It is one of the five Maria Sibylla Merian Centres constituted by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as centres of advanced studies

What we offer:

We offer writing fellowships that enable scholars to dedicate themselves entirely on their research free from other duties.

Our Fellows become part of a vibrant research community where they engage with our permanently associated members from India, Germany and other countries.

Our Fellows can publish their work in our two-book series:

  1. Metamorphoses of the Political: Multidisciplinary Approaches (Cambridge University Press),
  2. Politics and Society in India and the Global South (Routledge/SAGE)

We regularly organise workshops, conferences, and lectures in India, Germany and other places.

Why ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’?

Scholars associated with ICAS:MP examine and compare, from a wide array of disciplinary and methodological approaches, how ‘the political’ has been conceptualized, articulated and performed in specific arenas of contestation during what we call the ‘long twentieth century.’ This temporal demarcation is a heuristic tool that allows us to consider longer historical trajectories, ranging from the ‘age of empire’ to the transformative phase following the end of the Cold War in which ‘the political’ emerged as a realm transcending the boundaries of institutional politics.

ICAS:MP researchers ask: What comes to count as ‘the political’ in distinct locales? What are the historical dynamics of depoliticization and repoliticization: how has the boundary between the political and the non-political shifted over time? What are the material and normative stakes of claiming, redefining or rejecting, the political? How do these dynamics unfold beyond, and unsettle, the West/non-West divide?