SCAS News - 7 July, 2017

The SPSS Fellows from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East Have Convened at SCAS

Last week, between the 27th of June and the 1st of July, the Swedish Collegium hosted the third
and final meeting of the first round of the Summer Program in Social Science, which is an international,
interdisciplinary three-year-initiative organized by the Collegium in collaboration with the School of
Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, and the École des Hautes Études
en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. The overall theme of the programme is “A Global Politics of
Knowledge: Doing Social Science across Different Worlds”.

The programme, which has been designed specifically for junior scholars from Africa, the Middle East,
and Latin America, aims at constituting a genuinely international and interdisciplinary network of social
scientists from regions of the world traditionally not well-represented in the three institutions involved
in the initiative. The Fellows of the programme – eight women and eleven men – thus represent 18
different universities in Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Iran, Ivory Coast, Lebanon,
Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, Qatar and South Africa.

The overall ambition of the programme is to enrich and expand the realm of the social sciences through
the confrontation of different intellectual traditions and perspectives, to facilitate and enhance the dialogue
between various scientific disciplines and communities, and to strengthen international networks between
the global South and global North. One of the components of this ambition is a project which is aiming at
a collective book. In addition, each participant pursues her/his individual research project during the period
of the programme and present it to the others at various stages. The subjects represented by the participating
Fellows are Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, International Affairs, Law, Literature, Political
Science and Sociology.

For the meeting in Uppsala, a number of distinguished senior scholars had been invited to lead and participate
in the discussions as well as to talk about the Scandinavian experience/model and the geopolitics of global
knowledge, among other things. The speakers included Ulf Hannerz, Professor em. of Social Anthropology,
Stockholm University; Shalini Randeria, Rector at Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna; and Carl Tham,
former Swedish Minister of Higher Education and Research.

The first meeting of the summer programme was held in the early autumn of 2015 in Princeton, whereas the
second one was held last summer in Paris.

Professor Didier Fassin, IAS Princeton, leads the Summer Program in Social Science. Professor Björn Wittrock
is the corresponding coordinator at SCAS, whereas Professor Nancy L. Green is the corresponding coordinator
at EHESS. The programme is supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfund (the Swedish Foundation for Humanities
and Social Sciences), the Wolfensohn Family Foundation, and the three participating institutions.

Read more >>
SCAS News - 24 September, 2015: 19 Scholars from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America in the First
Cycle of the Summer Program in Social Science >>