The Citizenship, Rights and Cultural Belonging Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence seeks new understandings of citizenship, rights and belonging. It supports collaborative inquiries that explore their transformations in different times and places, as well as their viability as ideas that are connected to practices and institutions in the face of the conflicts that often surround them and in which they get entwined.
It assumes that while research and scholarship are disciplinarily rooted, because citizenship, rights, and belonging and claims to them are challenged and changing, a sense of experimental methodological openness is urgently needed for cutting-edge research and scholarship in this area of excellence. It welcomes scholars who are exploring the cultural, ethnic, gendered, sexual, evolutionary and transnational facets of citizenship, rights and belonging. It recognizes that national and international policy needs and contestations have generated intellectually lively debates and understandings among a broad range of governmental officials, politicians, lawyers, regulators, technocrats and activists outside of the academy who are addressing the fundamental issues defining citizenship, human rights and belonging on whose expertise we can draw and with whom we can collaborate.
