This inter-/transdisciplinary intensive seminar is organized by the Ghent Centre for Global Studies – one of the 5 research consortia in the Social Sciences and the Humanities at Ghent University, founded in 2013. This inter-/transdisciplinary research centre unites geographers, social and political scientists, legal scholars, economists, historians, philosophers and education scientists – a total of 12 research groups from 6 different faculties – around the critical study of global processes. In keeping with the spatial turn in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the centre aims to question the boundaries and scales of space and place, focusing on the co‐construction of the local and the global, with special attention to the historical and ethical dimensions of economic, political, social and cultural globalisation and to (local) agency in global processes and globe‐making projects.

The Global Studies Research Seminar provides doctoral students whose research is situated in, or related to, the field of Global Studies in‐depth and advanced training in contemporary critical Global Studies, and theory and methodology in related fields, such as Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies, International Studies, EU Studies, Area Studies, Conflict Studies, etc., next to general scholarly skills such as reading, writing, discussing and presenting.

Each year has a specific focus in general developments and debates in Global Studies and critical theories and methodologies, and will draw on different debates and course material. The first edition of this course (2013‐2014) provided multidisciplinary perspectives on the ‘global’ with each seminar taught by a guest speaker from a different discipline (geography, history, world politics, global ethics), including research presentations by the students. The second edition (2014-2015) had a more methodological aim, providing interdisciplinary entry points for research, with each seminar taught by two GCGS professors (coming from a different discipline), and paper assignments based on compulsory reading.

This year’s programme will focus on the key concept of “frontiers” in globalisation, providing interdisciplinary approaches, and taught by professors of the Ghent Centre for Global Studies, in tandem with international guest lecturers, leading experts on “frontiers” in different areas of Global Studies research. The seminar sessions will address processes of globalization through the concepts of “frontier” and “frontier zones”, understood as the process and the spatial setting of interaction between different forms of organization. These concepts serve as analytical tools to grasp the uneven local-global interactions underlying the incorporation of new places and peoples into the capitalist world-economy. Capitalism’s historical expansive drive is fuelled by the opening-up of new reserves of land, labour and capital, which comes with a reshuffling of power relations. The interplay of global forces and local struggles triggers the constant recreation of frontiers and frontier zones, undercutting the assumed uniformity and universality of global trajectories of incorporation.

The frontier concept offers an analytical tool to examine the local dynamics of transformative processes that push globalization. Concrete examples are the power struggles that come with property rights legislation, the extraction and commodification of resources, the planning of urban spaces, the regulation of flows of labour migration, and the expansion of international trade regimes and capital flows.
Format and assignments

Central to the course seminars are the key concepts, theories and methodologies for research in Global Studies as an inter-/transdisciplinary field. The course consists of one introductory meeting and five seminars of 3 hours during the second semester. Each seminar session will discuss a concrete application of the frontier concept on a specific research topic of common interest in the Ghent Centre of Global Studies and is taught by two professors of the Ghent Centre for Global Studies (respectively lecturer and moderator), and an international guest lecturer.

Registration In order to register, we invite you to visit the course page on the online platform Zephyr (zephyr.ugent.be). Students, researchers and lecturers from outside Ghent University can login as a free user, go to "inschrijven op cursussen", search for "Global Studies Research Seminar" or the course code X000363, and register.
To complete your registration, candidates are asked to send in a short CV (2 pages) and motivation (max. 250 words) to Hanne.Cottyn@ugent.be.
The deadline for registration is February 5.

The seminar also welcomes researchers to attend individual sessions of their interest.
For more information, please contact Hanne.Cottyn@ugent.be
Feel free to spread this announcement broadly amongst your contacts!

Language The teaching language is English, as will be the readings and expected papers.

Time & Location All sessions are organized on Tuesday afternoon, 14h-17h, approximately every 3 weeks.

Facultaire Vergaderzaal Decaan John Vincke
Faculty of Political and Social Sciences
Korte Meer 5 (1st floor), 9000 Gent

Course material
Required reading will be available on Zephyr (documents) minimum 3 weeks before every seminar.

Registration and evaluation
To register for this course, register as a user on this Zephyr page.
To complete your registration, please send your short CV (2 pages) and a short motivation (max. 250 words) to Hanne.Cottyn@UGent.be.
The deadline for registration is February 5.

This course is free of charge for members of the Ghent University Doctoral Schools.

This course is equivalent to 3 ECTS credits (for Master students and students from outside Ghent University).

Evaluation is based on presence and active participation during all sessions (absence to be announced and motivated) and the presentation of discussion papers.

This Research Seminar in Global Studies is organized by the Ghent Centre for Global Studies. The main objective of the course is to explore analytical tools and concepts in inter-/transdisciplinary research on globalization processes.

The course is co-ordinated by Dr. Hanne Cottyn (hanne.cottyn@ugent.be) and Dr. Julie Carlier, coordinator of the Ghent Centre for Global Studies (julie.carlier@ugent.be).

Information on practical arrangement and the content of this course, readings and announcements are available on this Zephyr page.

For further questions, please contact hanne.cottyn@ugent.be.