About the Postcolonial Studies Collective

The Potsdam Postcolonial Studies Collective (established in 2025 as a “Potentialbereich”) is an interdisciplinary network of scholars at the University of Potsdam’s Faculty of Arts. 

We understand the field of postcolonial studies as a critical perspective that challenges and offers alternatives to colonial and neo-colonial ways of ordering the world. This includes research on coloniality in all its forms, but also the study, development, or implementation of new critical methodologies in research and teaching, as well as a sustained effort to connect academic research to social actors and developments outside the university. 

As a new “Potentialbereich,” the Potsdam Postcolonial Studies Collective seeks to establish an International Research Training Group Cultures of Repair in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, develop alternative formats of communicating our research and establishing collaborations with groups and organizations beyond the university, strengthen faculty-wide joint research in the field of postcolonial studies, and ensure that this research field translates back into academic teaching.

The Potsdam Postcolonial Studies Collective builds on several years of experience in collaboration, including the Research Training Group minor cosmopolitanisms and the Research Unit Collaborations (both funded by the German Research Foundation), a DAAD Gastlehrstuhl (Postdam Postcolonial Chair of Global Modernities, 2020-2022), various bilateral research and exchange programs with partners worldwide, as well as a faculty partnership with the Princeton Global History Lab and ongoing collaboration with the Global History Lab at the University of Cambridge.