Through its innovative transnational structure, ICAS:MP aims to foster sustainable research cooperation among leading humanities and social science scholars from Germany, India and other countries who investigate similar research problems not necessarily confined to the same region. Scholarly exchange and joint exploration within ICAS:MP are defined by a shared interest in examining the shifting boundaries, historically contingent contents, and intellectual lineages of the twentieth century ‘political’. By working comparatively, ICAS:MP highlights the overlapping yet distinctive, trajectories of political processes that have unfolded over the globe.
These questions about the shifting nature of the ‘political’ have been addressed through sustained empirical focus since the inception of the centre in 2015.
In our current phase (July 2024-June 2027), the ICAS:MP consortium will investigate the following topics:
Working Group ‘Theory from the South’
Thematic Consolidation Group ‘Constructing Alternative Pasts: (New) Sources and Methods’
Thematic Consolidation Group ‘The Challenge of Gender’
Thematic Consolidation Group ‘Normative Conflicts and Transformations’: Focus Urban Futures
In the main phase of the project (July 2018-June 2024) ICAS:MP’s research revolved around seven paradigmatic arenas (Thematic Modules) contestation over delimiting the political has been particularly intense:
TM1 – History as a Political Category
TM2 – Labour as a Political Category
TM3: Critiques and Renewals of Democracy
TM4: Normative Conflicts and Transformations
TM6: Political Economy of Growth and Distribution
TM 7: Media and the Constitution of the Political
