Berlin Center for Interdisciplinary Peace and Conflict Research (INTERACT)

In this center, which is affiliated with the Department of Political and Social Sciences, three Junior Research Groups have been established. In analogy to the center's epistemic goals and commitments, the groups concentrate on three complementary fields of research:

• The Junior Research Group "Transnational Conflicts" deals with transnational dimensions of conflicts and their regulation. It focuses on the interconnectedness of struggles for justice, and for change in national and international order. It aims to analyse processes of transformation of transnational conflict constellations and their political, social, economic and legal entanglements. In doing so, it focuses in particular on the role of global knowledge orders.

• The Junior Research Group "Radical Spaces" explores the multifaceted dynamics of processes of social mobilization that are accompanied by (non-)state violence. At the core of its three-year research program are the conditions, forms, and dynamics of radical politics as well as the comparative investigation of contentious politics and patterns of their radicalization and repression. Radical spaces are not narrowly understood as breedings grounds for political violence but as emergent arenas of contentious interactions that radically break with common expectation sand previous patterns of thinking and doing politics. The focus is thus on political subjectivation processes and interaction dynamics between authorities and non-state actors that promote or constrain specific action strategies and condition whether social actors turn violent.

• The junior research group "Blurring Boundaries" examines existing concepts, terms and methods of peace and conflict studies with regard to their analytical usefulness as well as their social risks. It will explore how the strongly legal business and human rights approach influences our thinking and speaking about violence and responsibility in the context of transnationally operating corporations. To this end it combines genealogical conceptual work with empirical research. The project aims to intervene in both the academic discussion and the political debate on the topic.

Freigeist Research Group "The International Political Economy is not what it seems. Global Monetary Relations in the Age of Offshore Finance"

The research group analyses how the offshore dollar system shapes the international distribution of power between states and between the public and the private spheres. The group’s work contributes to both the conceptual and the empirical questions that arise from the offshore dollar system. It is organised around three work streams. First, we analyse the geopolitics of offshore finance. Second, we enquire about the nature of money as a constitutional project and tool of governing. Third, we ask how an international monetary system ought to be considering questions of inequality and planetary boundaries.
The group is bound together by a shared epistemological interest, but we work across disciplines and employ different methods.