Law in Context – Berlin Research Network on Legal Culture(s)

Law in Context (funded by the Berliner Senat since October 2009) aims at an enhanced re-contextualization of the law among its neighboring disciplines. From a genuinely legal perspective, the research network seeks to initiate new forms of dialogue and to create discursive structures between the law, the humanities and social sciences. This will confront the law and legal scholarship with other disciplines’ concept(s) and perception(s) of law. It builds upon the work and expertise of a group of scholars sharing a joint interest in contextual and contextualized legal knowledge. They represent a broad range of diverse approaches to the law, including gender studies, comparative research, law & literature, critical approaches to international law, administrative sciences, transitional justice, the law of development cooperation, and classical problems of legal philosophy.

Central among the research tools to be used is the modification of research questions in interdisciplinary discourse, be it in local, national or transregional network structures and constellations. A crucial element of the discursive structures to be institutionalized in an incremental step-by-step process is the establishment of a postdoctoral fellowship program, enabling scholars in an early stage of their careers to spend an academic year in Berlin and to contextualize themselves and their work in a new research environment. For more information, please visit the website of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Transatlantic Research on Gender Equity Training (TARGET): Restructuring of Modern Knowledge Economies and Management

TARGET focuses on the role of gender expertise in gender equity and organizational change. TARGET studies how organizations and governments "mainstream" gender equity concerns into (international) policy, particularly with regard to the transformation of feminist knowledge into "gender expertise" in a variety of policy fields. This new project is collaborative theoretical work on how gender is taken differently into account in the restructuring of modern knowledge economies and management in three nested ares: in gender studies as a field of study; in universitites as research organizations; and in the competitive environment of academic normsetting for "excellence". In cooperation with Paula-Irene Villa (University of Munich), Myra Mary Ferree (University of Wisconsin at Madision USA), Kathrin Zippel (Northeastern University Bosten USA).

Forum Transregional Studies

Prof. Baer is a member of the Forum Transregional Studies at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. The Forum Transregionale Studien is a new research platform of the Land of Berlin designed to promote research that connects systematic and region-specific questions in a perspective that addresses entanglements and interactions beyond national, cultural or regional frames. The Forum works subsidiarily to already existing institutions and networks engaged in transregional studies and is supported by an association of the directors of research institutes and networks mainly based in Berlin. 

The Forum Transregional Studies was founded on October 16, 2009 as a registered association, based on the recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities on Area Studies and of the Berlin Science Commission. It started its activities in 2010 by identifying and funding three transregional research projects based in Berlin research institutions in different fields. In an initial phase from November 1, 2009 until December 31, 2010 the Forum is funded by the Land Berlin. For a transitional period the Forum is hosted at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.