The twenty-four-month project “The Quest for a
‘Good Life’: Livelihood Strategies in Iran and Germany” is a continuation of
the project “The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Resources: Iranian and
German Perspectives” from 2018. The current project aims at long-term and
sustainable cooperation in research, teaching and supervision between the
following Iranian and German universities and research institutions:
- Department of
Sociology at the University of Isfahan (UI),
- Department of
English Language and Literature, and Department of Sociology at Ferdowsi
University of Mashhad (FUM).
- Iran Cultural
Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO)
- Department of
Social and Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University Frankfurt (GU),
- Frobenius
Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University
Frankfurt (GU).
The project will enable these institutions to
bring together their respective expertise in the training of students and early
career researchers (ECRs) and to integrate new teaching formats into the
graduate curriculum.
The project consists of a joint preparatory
seminar and two field studies, which will strengthen research-based learning
(RBL) and cultural exchange. In addition, a master class for academic writing and
publishing will be held to highlight the specifics of the challenges of
international academic publishing in the German and Iranian contexts. A
“research incubator” will support the development of successful funding
proposals and thus achieve the medium and long-term sustainability of the
infrastructures created in this project.
All these activities are carried out under the
main theme “The Quest for a ‘Good Life”, which concentrates on three specific
thematic areas:
- Ecological foundations of life in the
anthropocene: reconfiguration of human-nature relationships in the face of
environmental destruction,
- Alternative lifestyles: Norms and strategies in
changing socio-cultural relationships and
- Aesthetic practices and the search for better
livelihoods
