Founded on more than forty years of experience at the University of Bayreuth in conducting Africa-focused research, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence is designed to develop new responses to the theoretical, methodological and structural challenges facing African Studies. Since its inception in 2019, Africa Multiple has spearheaded innovative approaches and forms of collaborative research, with the objective of reconfiguring African Studies on both the conceptual and the structural level.

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) investigates well-known forms of de-pendency – such as Roman, transatlantic or Mamluk slavery, forced labor and debt bondage – as well as less visible forms, such as human trafficking and domestic servitude.

The Cluster of Excellence "Cross-Cultural Philology" explores philological practices and cultural dynamics across a period of 5,000 years through a cross-cultural approach. Its focus lies on the rich philological traditions of the Near and Middle East, East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North, East, and West Africa, and Europe. The aim is to identify similarities and differences, continuities and discontinuities, yielding insights far beyond the current state of the art.

ECONtribute’s goal is to break new ground in the analysis of markets & public policy. Motivated by pressing societal challenges, ECONtribute has advanced a new perspective in the first funding period by incorporating manifold ways of human thinking and acting into analyses of markets and policies. This includes drawing on notions of fairness, social preferences, beliefs, and expectations to explain market behavior, guide effective market and policy design, and the development of tools to assess the distributive implications of policies.

The 21st century is an exciting time in human origins research. Rapid methodological advances have revolutionized the study of fossil and archaeological remains, while surprising discoveries have overturned the status quo and upended long-established assumptions. We now know that multiple hominin species, representing a previously unimaginable diversity of human relatives, not only co-existed in time and space, but also interbred repeatedly, questioning traditional definitions of species.

A functioning society requires not only rules, procedures and institutions, but also shared ideas, narratives and images. The social practices of sharing these ideas, narratives and images constitute what we call ‘social imagining’. It involves the creation of communally distributed, intersubjectively recognised imaginaries that provide orientation and stability in everyday life.

The Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” investigates how political pro-cesses create, reinforce, or reduce social inequalities. By examining the interplay of perception, participation, and policy, we explore the dynamics of inequality in democ-racies and non-democracies around the world.

The Cluster »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« aims to create a basis for a new culture of materials. The central vision of the Cluster is to rediscover the analog in the activity of images, spaces and materials in the age of the digital.

The Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics. Dynamics of Tradition and Innovation” at the University of Münster has been investigating the complex relationship between religion and politics across epochs and cultures since 2007. The 140 researchers from 10 countries and more than 20 disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are particularly concerned in the funding phase from 2019 to 2025 with the “dynamics of tradition and innovation”.

Our Cluster of Excellence explores the deep roots of social, environmental, and cultural phenomena and processes that substantially marked past human development. In doing so, ROOTS helps to explain the long-term development of connectivities and to understand how they continue to have an impact today.