Welcome to the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms!
The Research Training Group (RTG) minor cosmopolitanisms was active from September 2016 to October 2025. It sought to establish new ways of studying and understanding the cosmopolitan project against and beyond its Eurocentric legacies. Designed as a training programme for early-career researchers, the RTG offered an international framework connecting Berlin and Potsdam with partner universities in Australia, South Africa, India, and the Americas. It supported PhD and postdoctoral projects in a diverse, decentral, collective, and convivial environment. Individual and joint projects within the RTG examined concrete critical, artistic, and everyday practices that challenged the divide between cultural relativism and humanist universalism in the humanities and social sciences. Collectively, the RTG worked to develop and promote an understanding of cosmopolitanism in the plural, combining visions of transcultural justice, peace, and conviviality with an ethical commitment to difference and alterity.
The RTG trained three generations of doctoral researchers over the course of the programme. Major outreach activities included public lecture series, three international winter and summer schools in Delhi, Sydney, and Pretoria, as well as a series of outreach projects. Highlights included three major events in Berlin hosted by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Silent Green, SAVVY Contemporary, AMO Salon, and Spore Initiative in December 2018, November 2021, and May 2025. These events featured panel discussions, lectures, exhibitions, performances, and concerts celebrating minor cosmopolitanisms.
