Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies
Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies 
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| founding | February 2017 |
| Directors | Axel Michaels , Barbara Mittler |
| place | Heidelberg |
| Seat | Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University ,
Vossstrasse 2, 69115 Heidelberg |
| Website | cats.uni-heidelberg.de |
The Center for Asian Studies and Transcultural Studies ( CATS ) is an interdisciplinary institution of the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg .
The CATS brings together the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) - emerged from the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" - and the Asian academic institutions of Heidelberg University spatially and structurally: the South Asia Institute (SAI), the center for East Asian Studies (ZO) and the Institute for Ethnology (IfE) with its focus on Southeast Asia. The official opening of the center took place on June 25, 2019.
Construction / structure
The research building for the CATS was funded by the federal government and the state of Baden-Württemberg . The Joint Science Conference of the Federal Government and the Länder approved the funding application for the CATS in June 2013. In addition, the University of Heidelberg and the institutes involved partially covered the costs for the construction and renovation as well as the required initial equipment.
The CATS is located in the listed buildings of the Altklinikum in Heidelberg-Bergheim . The four buildings, built between 1875 and 1886, enclose the courtyard with a shared library with four basement floors on an area of around 7600 square meters. The South Asia Institute is located in building 4130, the Center for East Asian Studies in 4120, the Institute for Ethnology in 4110 and the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies in 4400.
The following institutions and chairs come together in the CATS, which work in areas such as ethnology, geography, history, cultural, art, literary and music studies, the history of knowledge and religion, or political and economic science. Overall, the CATS comprises more than two dozen Asian science professorships, numerous permanent visiting professorships and over 1,500 students. More than 20 Asian languages are taught and more than a dozen different degree programs or doctoral programs are offered. CATS is one of the largest Asian science institutions in Europe.
Institutes
South Asia Institute (SAI)
The SAI has seven professorships in Development Economics, Ethnology, Geography, History of South Asia, Cultural and Religious History of South Asia (Classical Indology), New Language South Asian Studies (Modern Indology), Political Science of South Asia and the Heinrich Zimmer Chair for Indian Philosophy and Intellectual, which is funded by the Indian government History, the Pakistan-funded Allama Iqbal Professorial Fellowship, and the Sri Lankan Chair of Sri Lankan Studies. Three further professorships from the HCTS are associated.
Center for East Asian Studies (ZO)
The ZO has four professorships in Sinology and two each in Japanese Studies and Art History; Associated are three further professorships from the HCTS, in addition there are regular guest professorships in all three subjects, and a visiting lecturer program especially in the field of history, culture and society of Taiwan.
Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies (HCTS)
The HCTS has five professorships for Global Art History (focus on South Asia and the Middle East), Buddhist Studies (focus on South and East Asia with Tibet), Visual and Media Anthropology (focus on South Asia), Cultural Economic History (focus on Japan) and Intellectual History (focus China).
Institute for Social Anthropology (IfE)
The Institute for Ethnology has two professorships; two other professorships are associated with the HCTS and SAI. Regional research focuses on the island and mainland Southeast Asia as well as South Asia.
Management / organization
The CATS is headed by a board of directors made up of the managing directors of the participating institutions (SAI, ZO, IfE and HCTS) as well as representatives from non-Asian scientific disciplines. It organizes the research work with the managing directors of the participating institutions.
During the development phase (2013 to 2019), Sinologist Barbara Mittler and Indologist Axel Michaels will act as founding directors.
research
The structural changes made with the construction of the CATS should make it possible to take new paths in Asian research, which are necessary because of the different scientific cultures in Europe and Asia as well as the long but increasingly less accepted discourse dominance of the Western European sciences and their models are. This happens in the following research fields:
Socio-economic dynamics of power, governance and administration: The focus here is on international relations and global interdependencies with and in the Asian region, the comparative analysis of the (foreign) policies of Asian states, their economic and political reforms and the relationship between China, India and Japan to the respective regional neighbors.
Social and demographic change, urbanization and migration: The subject of research is in particular the more or less dramatic forms of social and demographic change depicted in models of social organization, transitions from agrarian to industrial economic forms or supra-regional migration flows. Strategies for dealing with dynamically developing megacities and megaregions with regard to urban planning and population migration are also in the focus of this research field in their interdisciplinary complexity.
Cultural heritage, science and education: The main research focus is on the changes that texts, languages, objects, images, terms and spaces have undergone in the course of time and in different contexts. This touches on questions of cultural heritage (material and immaterial) and knowledge systems as well as the history of science in the area of tension between tradition and modernity, city and country, public and media in the context of a globally institutionalized culture and education market. Religions as well as literary, musical and artistic models and their multidimensional transformations in Asia and Europe through history and the present are examined here.
Humans, the environment and health: Changes in the environment and their effects on humans are recorded with regard to their dynamic interrelationships in different spatial and temporal scales, and analyzed with regard to their material, institutional, legal and political framework. It examines, among other things, how knowledge in the areas of the environment, health (e.g. with reference to the great healing traditions of Asia) and other fields of science that explore the animate and the inanimate world is generated, passed on, institutionalized, challenged and defended.
Course offer
The following courses are offered at CATS:
Bachelor courses
- ethnology
- History of South Asia
- Cultural and religious history of South Asia
- Newer languages and literatures of South Asia
- East Asian Studies (optional focus on Japanese Studies, East Asian Art History or Sinology and Sinology Teaching Degree)
- South Asian Studies
Masters courses
- ethnology
- Health and Society in South Asia
- Japanology
- Communication, literature and media in South Asian new languages
- Conference interpreting Japanese
- Cultural and religious history of South Asia
- Art history of East Asia
- Sinology
- South Asian Studies
- Transcultural Studies
Individual evidence
- ↑ CATS Opening Events CATS website, accessed June 16, 2019
- ↑ Heidelberg "CATS": Asia and Europe meet in Bergheim. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Steffen Kemmer: Center for Asian Studies and Drink Culture Studies (CATS). September 19, 2017. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ^ Institutes - University of Heidelberg. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ SAI website
- ^ Website of the ZO
- ↑ HCTS website
- ↑ IfE website
- ↑ Heidelberg "CATS": Asia and Europe meet in Bergheim. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ^ Research - Heidelberg University. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Studies | CATS - Heidelberg University. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .