Research Areas (RAs)
Our Research Areas (RAs) are the bedrock structure of our research and serve as interfaces between disciplines. They provide a relatively long-term, easily accessible, and stable research community space of exchange and cooperation for individual researchers. To ensure that ideas and discourses will flourish not only within, but also across RAs, every PI, Postdoc, and PhD is part of at least one of our five RAs. The members of the RAs meet regularly in collaborative work formats and generate the core outputs of our research.
The five new RAs of Phase 2 (2026–2032) will enable us to investigate the underlying causes and mechanisms that contribute to the persistence of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies (SADs) and thus to fully understand why and how SADs persist across historical and contemporary contexts.
RA A: Transitions and Transformations
While SADs are constitutive of all human societites, their forms are neither stable in themselves nor do they play out in static environments. Instead, SADs are shaped by continuities and changes at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of societies. Research in this RA will contribute to meeting one of our research objectives for Phase 2, i.e., developing a concept of relational SAD and examining more systematically how different SADs not only interrelate but also co-determine each other.
RA B: Economies of SAD
RA B will examine how the partial or complete exclusion, by coercive means, from access to markets, resources, honor, and social relations shape economic behavior. Research in this RA will build on this approach and contribute to meeting another research objective of Phase 2, i.e., examining how and why logics of efficiency and the increase of capital (economic, social, and moral) inform SADs and how they are embedded in the wider cultural context and belief system.
RA C: Power – Violence – Trauma
Physical coercion and emotional violence are key interconnected factors for establishing and upholding systems and relations of SAD. These systems and relations often entail enforced separation, and as such bring about the loss of cultural and social belonging within and across families and kin. They may also weaken society as a whole and lead to social change. Research in this RA will focus on our third research objective of Phase 2, i.e., investigating the interrelated power dynamics in situations of, and communities structured through, SAD.
![Peter Kolb: Caput Bonae Spei Hodiernum: Vollständige Beschreibung des Africanischen Vorgebürges der Guten Hoffnung [...]. Nürnberg (Peter Conrath Monath) 1719](https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/images/research-phase-2/research-areas-phase-2/caput-bonae-spei-hodiernum.png/@@images/image)
!["Two coolies between Pok and Dunkur. Piti valley. Natives of Chinese Tibet. June 9 / [18]53."](https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/images/research-phase-2/research-areas-phase-2/two-coolies-between-pok-and-dunkur.jpeg/@@images/image)
RA D: Cultural Heritage – Transitional Justice – Memory Cultures
RA D will focus on the interrelated and contested fields of cultural heritage, memory, and justice. Cultural heritage is inextricably linked with cultural memory and concepts of (in)justice, e.g., discussing contemporary notions of justice and considering how these notions address histories of colonial dispossession, enslavement, and other forms of SAD from the perspective of those who were colonized, enslaved, and dependent. Research in this RA will meet our fourth research objective of Phase 2, i.e., contributing to current public debates regarding these important social and political questions.
RA E: Alternative Archives – Life Writing
RA E will bring together researchers from different disciplines with a shared interest in exploring the words, actions, and archival traces of enslaved and dependent people and the question of which narratives of SAD and slavery emerge once lives of dependent people are put center stage. Thus, research in this RA will be informed by our fifth research objective of Phase 2, i.e., developing innovative, creative, and imaginative methods to find, listen to, and restore the agency and the voices and experiences of people who bent to, were forced into, resisted, survived, and endured a life in SAD.
