TRANSUR: Transformed by the South. The Circulation of Latin American Social Sciences in France and Germany

The circulation of academic knowledge from North to South has been one of the most explored foci in studies on the circulation of knowledge, yet we know much less about the reverse direction: How does knowledge from the Global South circulate and what role does it play in the North? In TRANSUR we address this research gap based on a comparative study on the circulation of Latin American social sciences in France and Germany/Federal Republic of Germany during the period that coincides with the development of area studies since the Cold War up to the present (1950 to 2024). The central research questions of the project can be formulated as follows: How has the circulation of social sciences from Latin America to France and Germany evolved over time? Which factors have favoured this South-North circulation, which made it more difficult? How were intellectual debates and research fields impacted and how can we explain similarities and differences between France and Germany.

We address three key dimensions of Latin American social science circulation in Germany and France: A) Institutionalisation; B) Reception and exchange; and C) Translation, each with specific questions and workpackages, but interconnected. In order to analyse these dimensions, we use perspectives of sociology of knowledge and intellectual history. The research topic requires additional expertise from neighbouring research fields and disciplines (political science, anthropology, sociology of translation, history of academic institutions, Science and Technology Studies [STS], and library and information sciences) as well as their integration through an interdisciplinary, synergetic approach.

The international project is coordinated by the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (IAI), the SAGE (Sociétés, Acteurs, Gouvernement en Europe), Université de Strasbourg in cooperation with the Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique latine, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.

TRANSUR is supported by the ANR-DFG funding programme for Franco-German research projects in the humanities and social sciences from April 2026 to March 2029.

 

The teams composing the TRANSUR-consortium have jointly defined the following overarching project aims: 

1.  to provide comparable data and empirically grounded analyses on a less explored direction of knowledge flows from South to North; 
2.  to broaden the theoretical and methodological perspectives on asymmetries and entanglements in the international circulation of knowledge; 
3. to assess the potential for collaboration and complementarity of French and German institutions with a focus on Latin America.

Conceived as a transnational research network, TRANSUR articulates the pertinent research and outreach activities conducted by a group of 12 researchers from German, French and Latin American institutions. The whole project team will meet on a regular basis in Annual Workshops in order to ensure harmonisation of empirical approaches and maximisation of synergetic effects so as to achieve the highest levels of collaboration throughout the research process and complementarity of achievements and results. 

The Annual Workshops shall serve to exchange on the work process, to plan collective activities such as the organisation of joint panels in major congresses and co-authored publications, and the in-depth discussion of work-in-progress manuscripts for the planned publications. Invitation of up to four external specialists shall ensure fresh perspectives and critical feed-back on our work. Each annual workshop also includes the organisation of one public event (keynote speech or roundtable) for the broader academic community and interested public so as to ensure the visibility of our collective work. In the context of the annual workshop organised in Berlin (2026), all team members will benefit from access to one of the major European library and archival collections on Latin America at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut.

Each Work Package team will hold an Annual Working Retreat of one week. These retreats shall serve to discuss our research instruments (grid of spreadsheets, interview guides, approaches to textual analysis and selection criteria for text corpora, etc.); to deepen our research questions; to work collectively on our planned publications (writing retreat, discussion of draft papers in the form of author workshops, joint editorial work), and to develop our comparative perspectives.
 

TRANSUR plans to publish its findings in various academic formats (policy papers, in indexed journals, compilations), with a multilingual approach (English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese) and open access. Additionally, TRANSUR plans to publish some of its research data to ensure that it can be reused. Furthermore, TRANSUR’s results will be presented at international academic conferences, scientific events, colloquia, and symposia.