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Research Collaboratives
Innovative research increasingly depends on teams of faculty and graduate students from more than one institution and several disciplines working together. They need to be able to interact directly, for sustained periods, and across significant geographical space. To that end CGES has developed the research collaborative model, a structure that allows interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students at the University of Minnesota to collaborate with colleagues at another institution across North America, or even in Europe. Participants in these one- to two-year projects meet regularly in virtual classroom and at live meetings. Research results are steadily being published and shared at academic meetings.
Since first launching the research collaborative model with The University of Wisconsin, our consortial partner, in 1999, CGES has supported more than a dozen collaborative research projects. Each year two competitively selected research collaboratives receive a generous package of financial and research staff support.
Current Research Collaborative
- Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and Whittier Law School
Past Research Collaboratives
- War, Peace, and the Birth of a United Europe, 1648-2003
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and The University of Wisconsin—Madison - Eastern Europe in Transition: Property Relations and Society
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and The University of Wisconsin—Madison - Gender, Genre and Political Transformations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and The University of Wisconsin—Madison - Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and Whittier Law School - Citizenship and Identity in Central Europe, 1890 to the Present
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and The University of Wisconsin - The Impact of the Expansion of the European Union on Labor Markets and the Location of Production
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota, Universita Pompeu Fabra, Spain, and Universidad de Salamanca, Spain - Expansion, Integration, and Homogenization of the European Union: Assessing the Role of Foreign Direct Investment
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and Humboldt University, Berlin - Out of Europe : Time, Place, and Memory since 1945
research collaborative between the University of Minnesota and The University of Wisconsin
War, Peace, and the Birth of a United Europe, 1648-2003
Lead faculty:
Klaus L. Berghahn, Professor of German and Jewish Studies, UW-Madison
David McDonald, Professor of History, UW-Madison
Eric D. Weitz, Professor and Chair of History, UMN
In Kant's treatise "On Perpetual Peace" (1795), one finds the surprising statement that "Nature has chosen war as a means of obtaining peace." This dialectic of war and peace seems like a Mephistophelian principle of history that promotes war and accomplishes peace. In the graduate seminar associated with the research collaborative, participants will use this paradox as a guiding hypothesis to examine how wars in Europe since the 17th century contributed to the development of peace and a United Europe. Especially since the Enlightenment and continuing to this day, the hope for a peaceful Europe has been articulated in many texts, all of which have a utopian tinge: Saint Pierre, Rousseau, Bentham, Kant, Fr. Schlegel, Fichte, Berta von Suttner, Nobel, Einstein, Freud, Russell and many others. It is this cluster of philosophical, political, and poetic texts, enhanced by secondary analyses of their theoretical grounding, that will ground the seminar discussion.
Eastern Europe in Transition: Property Relations and Society
Lead faculty:
Peter Bloch, Faculty Associate, Department of Forest Ecology & Management and Land Tenure Center, UW-Madison
Francis Harvey, Associate Professor of Geography, UMN
Robert J. Kaiser, Professor of Geography, UW-Madison
Volker C. Radeloff, Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology and Management, UW-Madison
Stephen J. Ventura, Professor of Environmental Studies and Soil Science, UW-Madison
Thomas C. Wolfe, Associate Professor of History, UMN
This research collaborative explores the geo-political, economic, social, environmental, and cultural transformations after the collapse of socialism in 1989. Land is at the nexus of many contested issues in Central and Eastern Europe. Tensions among transnational, national, and local interests challenge processes of transition and the use and rights to land. The graduate seminar associated with the collaborative examines the ambiguous and complex paths of Post-socialist transition.
A concluding international conference "Paper Landscapes and Lived Landscapes: Cadastral Systems, Agrarian Reform, and European Expansion" took place in Warzaw, Poland, January 11-14, 2007.
Family Dynamics in a Changing Europe (U of M link canceled)
Lead faculty:
Elizabeth Thomson, Professor of Sociology, UW-Madison, and Stockholm University
Gunnar Andersson, Professor of Sociology, Stockholm University; researcher, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Ann Meier, Professor of Sociology, UMN
This research collaborative examines family dynamics in Europe over the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st. As most students of Europe know well, fertility rates and family behavior have changed dramatically in Europe as well as in the United States and other wealthy countries of the world. Fertility has fallen to historic lows. This has serious long-term consequences for the sustainability of many social welfare regimes—but not everywhere. Increasingly many women delay childbearing and marriage, with uncertain long-term consequences for the welfare of parents and children—but again, not everywhere. Extra-marital births, premarital cohabitation, and high rates of union dissolution have become common with adverse consequences for parents, children and extended kin—but there are also many examples to the contrary.
Why is there such diversity in patterns and trends of fertility and family formation in Europe? How and to what extent is the demographic diversity of Europe interlocked with its cultural, institutional, and economic diversity?
Gender, Genre and Political Transformations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Lead faculty:
Myra Marx Ferree, Professor of Sociology and Women Studies, UW-Madison
Ruth-Ellen Joeres, Professor of German, UMN
M.J. Maynes, Professor of History, UMN
Questions of gender and citizenship that had their roots in the modern age of revolutions have remained central to political developments in Europe and the Americas to the present day. The seminar associated with the research collaborative analyzed and compared key historical moments when challenges to political order intersected with challenges to the gender order in Europe and the US. It integrated biographical, historical, and sociological perspectives on these struggles. Participants examined issues of perspective and voice and competing definitions of radicalism, transformation, inclusion, equality, and citizenship.
An international conference "Gender, Genre, and Political Transformations" at the University of Minnesota, November 10-12, 2006 concluded the project. Keynote speakers included Rita Felski, Patricia Herminghouse, and Elizabeth Mittman.
Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law
Lead faculty:
Michael Bazyler, Professor of Law, Whittier Law School
Stephen Feinstein, Professor of History, director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, UMN
Legal reactions to the horrors of the Holocaust have been much more extensive than just the creation by the Allies of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. They include critical changes in both national laws and international law in the aftermath of World War II. The graduate seminar associated with the research collaborative examined the legal response of nations and the international community to Genocide and the Holocaust and how legal cases and legal discourse, as well as trials, have become discursive items that involve not only the legal community, but the academic community in general and the public.
The Impact of the Expansion of the European Union on Labor Markets and the Location of Production
Lead faculty:
Timothy J. Kehoe, Professor of Economics, UMN
Juan Carlos Conesa, Professor of Economics, Universita Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain
The European Union is expanding eastwards. Will Western Europe be flooded with workers looking for jobs and willing to work for low pay? Or will the restrictions on labor mobility keep these workers at home as western firms invest in the East? What sort of sectors will expand, which will contract? In which sectors will trade and foreign investment liberalization lead to expansion of opportunities for investors and workers in the West?
These are essential questions for just about everyone—economists, policy makers, workers, investors, and academics. Changes in policies governing trade and foreign investment and international labor mobility can have important impacts that are not captured by the traditional economic models used to analyze the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement. This research collaborative used the North American experience to develop new analytical techniques for studying the impact of expanding the European Union eastwards.
Citizenship and Identity in Central Europe, 1890 to the Present
Lead faculty:
Gary Cohen, Professor of History, director, Center for Austrian Studies, UMN
Elizabeth Covington, Director of the European Studies Alliance, UW-Madison
Alison Frank, Professor of History, UW-Madison
Eric D. Weitz, Professor and Chair of History, UMN
Citizenship and identity issues have shaped the course of history in Central Europe and thus of Europe in its entirety. How is the construction of a New Europe in the 21st Century laying a new groundwork for the political, social, economic, and cultural life of Central and Eastern Europe? How does this shape a new context and new rules for the politics of citizenship and identity in Central Europe? Ultimately, collaborative participants wanted to ascertain what is unique about the current construction of Central and Eastern Europe within the context of European unification.
As part of this research collaborative, an international workshop on “National Politics and Population Migrations in Central and Eastern Europe” took place in Minneapolis in April 2006. It explored three themes that have largely been studied separately but emerged as inextricably intertwined to research collaborative participants: nation-building and nationalism, population migrations, and ethnic cleansings and genocides.
Expansion, Integration, and Homogenization of the European Union: Assessing the Role of Foreign Direct Investment
Lead faculty:
Glenn Pederson, Professor of Applied Economics, UMN
Harald von Witzke, Professor of Economics and Social Studies of Agriculture, Humboldt University Berlin
The objective of this research collaborative was to assess the role of foreign direct investment in the continuing expansion, integration and homogenization of the European Union. Conceptually, the research developed a better understanding of foreign investment along two dimensions—the “requirements” for foreign investment to occur, and the “linkages” of foreign investment that serve as the channels for spillovers and impacts to occur.
Out of Europe : Time, Place, and Memory since 1945
Lead faculty:
Leslie Morris, Professor of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch, UMN
Amy Kaminsky, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Women's Studies, UMN
Michael Bernard-Donal, Professor of English and Jewish Studies, UW-Madison
Keith Cohen, Professor of Comparative Literature, UW-Madison
We generally believe texts possessing the most authenticity or historical validity to be those written closest to the event or with the greatest adherence to the event. Yet representations that do not hew closely to the event—and in fact “create” the event in imaginary or memorial terms—possibly provide an event's most palpable trace or effect. This research collaborative examined how the historical, cultural, and national displacements that resulted from the conclusion of the second World War have been represented in aesthetic, memorial, and imaginative (or imaginary) terms. In particular, participants investigated how to radically rethink as a seminal date, among others in the imaginary of European identity, the notion of “since 1945.”