CALAS - Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies

"Coping with Crises. How do societies in Latin America solve crises? This question is the focus of the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS), which has been established since 2017 with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and is headquartered in Guadalajara, Mexico. After a successful evaluation and the approval of another €12 million, the project is in its main phase (2019-2025). This is the most extensive research project on Latin America that has been funded with federal funds to date.

In May 2019, the first line of research was launched, which explores transitions from violence to peace in Latin America. Project leaders are Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Prof. Dr. Joachim Michael (University of Bielefeld), and Prof. Dr. David Díaz and Prof. Dr. Werner Mackenbach, both from the University of Costa Rica (UCR). The establishment of the CALAS-Merian Center in Guadalajara by the four German project sponsors takes place in close networking with the CALAS regional centers in San José/Costa Rica, Buenos Aires/Argentina and Quito/Ecuador. The representatives of Leibniz Universität Hannover together with the colleagues of UCR form the regional center "Central America and Caribbean". With this decentralized constellation, CALAS is to radiate throughout Latin America.

Project leaders on the German side are Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky from the Centre for Atlantic and Global Studies (CEAGS) of this joint project coordinated by the University of Bielefeld (Prof. Dr. Olaf Kaltmeier), Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Burchardt (University of Kassel), and Prof. Dr. Claudia Hammerschmidt from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. As an international and interdisciplinary beacon, CALAS sets new accents in research in the humanities and social sciences in Latin America, will promote cutting-edge research, and will permanently network Latin American and German scientists*. The goal is not to conduct research on Latin Americans, but to work with them at a top scientific level to develop new - also transregional - scientific approaches to problem solving in practice.