Contact: Elizabeth Covington, Executive Director, European Studies Alliance, (608) 265-4778, eecovington@wisc.edu
The Center for German and European Studies (CGES) at University of Wisconsin–Madison has received a grant for $530,000 from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) renewing the center’s funding through 2012.
“Writing a successful grant this time was a terrific challenge because DAAD had decided to shift from a center-focused to a project-focused funding model,” says Myra Marx Ferree, CGES director. “However, our faculty rose to the challenge beautifully, and we put together a compelling package that really spoke to cutting-edge concerns and will allow us to work synergistically across disciplinary lines.”
CGES proposed four international, interdisciplinary plans to DAAD including: After the Violence: The Work of Memory in German Culture and Society (Leader: Marc Silberman); Positioning ‘Modern’ Germany in the World: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism Colonialism, Migration, (Leader: B. Venkat Mani); Transforming European Governance (Leader: Jonathan Zeitlin); Work, Family, and Education in Europe: Challenges of Globalization and Gender (Leader: Myra Marx Ferree).
DAAD’s reviewers recognized that “social science-based proposals have great potential as break-through ventures for newly integrated knowledge about major social transformations in western societies.” What is more, they wrote, humanities projects represent a “comprehensive effort to broaden existing research in German culture, political history, and mental transformation since the 19th century.”
DAAD established the CGES in 1998 under the German Marshall Plan with matching grants from UW–Madison and the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Devoted to the development of the next generation of scholars and the production of new knowledge relating to Germany and Europe, the center supports research, teaching, and outreach in a broad range of fields and disciplines. At the heart of the center’s activities is a unique series of research projects focusing on Germany and Europe from a trans-Atlantic perspective, involving faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars.
“CGES is a model for cutting-edge social science- and humanities-based interdisciplinary, international research and graduate education,” says Gilles Bousquet, dean of the Division of International Studies. “This highly competitive new award is a tribute to the leadership of Professor Myra Marx Feree.”
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