IEG's participation in the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) "Human Differentiation"

Since 1 July 2021, the German Research Foundation has been funding the Collaborative Research Centre 1482 "Human Differentiation" of the JGU Mainz and the IEG. This collaborative project focuses on the research question of how historical and contemporary societies categorise their members, separate them spatially and thus suggest different social affiliations. Human differentiation is to be explicated as a form of cultural differentiation and its connection with forms of social and societal differentiation is to be decoded.
The work carried out by the IEG since 2012 as part of its research programme on "Negotiating Differences in Modern Europe" is thus incorporated into an interdisciplinary network in the cultural and social sciences. The SFB involves researchers from the historical sciences at the IEG as well as from sociology and ethnology, American studies and linguistics, theatre studies, media culture studies and translation studies at the JGU.

The sub-projects led by the IEG are:

• B05: "Legal-bureaucratic human differentiation in the post-war period. From the 'Displaced Persons' to the 'Refugee'" (lead: Anne Friedrichs, staff: Christina Wirth)
• C02: "Zoological Human Differentiation. Behavioural Research in the Context of Decolonisation and the Formation of Scientific Disciplines" (lead: Johannes Paulmann, staff: Bernhard Gißibl)
• C03: "Pandemic Human Differentiation. Proxemic Change in Virally Irritated Sociality" (lead: Johannes Paulmann and Stefan Hirschauer, JGU Mainz)

Another IEG-project is associated with the CRC:

• "Making and Becoming 'New (Wo)Men': Rationalisation, Subjectification, and Materiality in the Industrial Town of Zlín and the Baťa Company, 1920–1950" (Gregor Feindt)

With the overarching project "Differentiation and Historical Studies", the IEG (Johannes Paulmann) also aims to reflect differentiation processes in history and the historical sciences.