Press release

Power and knowledge: Humboldt Foundation fostering confrontation with imbalances in knowledge systems

The 2024 Humboldt Residency Programme to revolve around the exchange of knowledge between the Global North and the Global South.

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Eleven participants from academia, research, the media and civil society will gather in Brandenburg and Berlin from 5 August until mid-September under the banner Power and Knowledge – Confronting Global Imbalances in Our Knowledge Systems to discuss challenges and new directions in the global transfer of knowledge.

Every year since 2022, the Humboldt Residency Programme has brought together a group of researchers from various disciplines, journalists, artists and activists to work on a joint issue during a six-week residency in Brandenburg and Berlin. The programme aims to tap into the participants’ diversity – evidenced by their diverse disciplines, places of origin and social backgrounds – to cross-pollinate and contribute to innovative ideas and solutions that transcend the boundaries of science, research and academia. Using events and publications, the programme seeks to generate visible impetus in science, society and the political sector. It is financed by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and held in cooperation with the Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf. 

The Humboldt Residency Programme 

Knowledge arises and circulates in a global but asymmetrical network of power structures that is not always visible and has effects at both societal and political level. How can we make knowledge widely accessible? How can we protect and promote indigenous knowledge and raise awareness of it around the world? How can researchers and political actors be sensitised to persisting colonial structures and to the value and diversity of existing local and indigenous knowledge? 

Robert Schlögl, President of the Humboldt Foundation, stresses the need for international perspectives, especially in times of new global shifts of power: “It’s no secret that the way we gain, utilise and distribute knowledge is shaped by global power structures. Even in science systems, participation is still determined too often by background, origin, and social and economic status. How can we create global structures that make it possible for researchers from throughout the world to be part of and – at the same time – profit from the production of knowledge? We need bright minds that gather ideas from the Global South and the Global North across disciplinary boundaries in order to work together for a more just future for all.

This year’s participants hail from a wide range of countries that include Australia, Nigeria, Mauritius and Mongolia. Working across disciplines and topics – from anthropology and cultural studies all the way to health research, machine learning and science journalism – they will focus on the inclusion and exclusion mechanisms at work in global knowledge production. Following a familiarisation and work phase at the Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf in the Brandenburg countryside, the participants will move to Berlin’s urban diversity in mid-August. The group is planning network meetings with experts from Germany and designing offers of its own for the Berlin public to join in the dialogue. It will then develop recommendations for the political implementation of a globally more just transfer of knowledge. 

Information about the participants in this year’s Residency Programme is available here.

(Press release 15/2024)

Every year, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world to spend time conducting research in Germany. The Foundation maintains an interdisciplinary network of well over 30,000 Humboldtians in more than 140 countries around the world – including 61 Nobel Prize winners.

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