Göttingen Diversity Research Institute

Welcome to the website of the Göttingen Diversity Research Institute!

The Göttingen Diversity Research Institute studies processes of diversification and their consequences. The Institute’s primary aim is to develop research on diversity and processes of diversification, both theoretically and empirically. We focus in particular on organisational issues.
Other areas of interest include the micro level, the macro level and the symbolic order.

We are interested in the following questions:

• How, when and why do organisations respond to diversity?
• Which societal processes and tendencies lead to diversification and diversity?
• How, and to what extent, are individuals affected by different dimensions of diversity?
• How are diversity management policies perceived by universities, businesses, governments, the press, etc.?

The Institute also advises the University of Göttingen in implementing and developing its research-based and research-oriented diversity strategy.

New project: Urban Lab - Paths towards a colonial-critical city

The Göttingen Diversity Research Institute is part of the urban lab. The urban lab provides space for exchange and the joint exploration of paths towards a colonial-critical city of Göttingen. The project aims to gather perspectives, connect knowledge and shape commemoration. In addition to processing local colonial history, the urban lab aims to increase the visibility of anti-colonial resistance and colonial continuities to this day. The project focuses on participation: all people in Göttingen are invited to get involved and participate. The urban lab calls for a public collection of objects, documents and other pieces of historical evidence in order to build an "open archive". Stories that are currently still lying in drawers in attics and cellars will be studied and made accessible. The urban lab is particularly interested in historical traces and biographies of people from formerly colonised areas and of past and present anti-colonial resistance in Göttingen.

The urban lab is funded by the Lower Saxon Ministry for Science and Culture through its programme "Future Discourses" (Zukunftsdiskurse). Current project partners are: Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology, Göttingen Diversity Research Institute, Centre for Global Migration Studies (all University of Göttingen); Göttingen postkolonial, Entwicklungspolitisches Informationszentrum Göttingen (EPIZ), PLEA e. V., boat people project, Literarisches Zentrum Göttingen.

Press release on the launch event (in German)
More information on the project

Out Now: The Reflexive Diversity Research Programme: An Introduction

Andrea D. Bührmann’s new monograph, “The Reflexive Diversity Research Programme: An Introduction” has been published with Cambridge Scholars Press.
Diversity is both a cause for controversial discussions and an opportunity to reflect on social participation. This book offers a basic introduction to important currents in diversity research by presenting central theoretical determinants of the research perspective. An analysis of the diversity strategy and its implementation at the University of California, Berkeley serves as an empirical-practical example in this regard. In particular, this case study illustrates the intersectional research perspective and the multi-level and multi-method research design of reflexive diversity research. In the sense of reflexive constructivism, the practice of research itself is reflected using the example of the case study.

The book is available in hardback here: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-6394-0

A review by Larissa Krainer (University of Klagenfurt) of the German edition can be found at https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/3783