CENTERS AND PUBLICATIONS
Transregional Center for Democratic Studies
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Building on the interdisciplinary tradition of
this reason, TCDS welcomes as partners and
NSSR, the Transregional Center for Democratic
collaborators scholars who are involved in public
Studies (TCDS) creates and implements cross-
life and in efforts to strengthen civil society.
departmental programs aimed at addressing
TCDS’s activities provide a solid link between
special needs and opportunities for research
the New School campus in New York and
and graduate or advanced undergraduate
two regions of the world: eastern Europe
study that can promote better understanding
and southern Africa, both sites of ongoing
of the world. TCDS cultivates research on the
democratic transformations and places that
increasingly globalized public sphere and the
reveal the vulnerability of democracy to illiberal
emergence of autonomous publics and nurtures
solutions and even violence. TCDS’s initiatives
a new kind of citizen-researcher concerned
have led to the emergence of extensive scholarly
with the ways society, embedded in a specific
networks in these regions, bringing young
cultural and historical context, debates and
scholars and civically committed academics
seeks solutions to shared problems.
together with NSSR graduate students.
The center’s programs (public events,
Our flagship programs are the region-based
workshops, conferences, and summer institutes
Democracy & Diversity Institutes, held annually
conducted in New York City and abroad)
in Johannesburg, South Africa (January), and
facilitate study, research, and debates on the
Wrocław, Poland (July). The institutes are
challenges of democracy and democratization
intensive three-week programs of study in
and the related issues of development,
which up to 40 young civic-minded scholars
citizenship, and intercultural conversation
engage through discussion and debate in a
in a globalized world. The programs are also
rigorous quest for a deeper and more nuanced
aimed at building bridges between academic
understanding of the challenges to democracy
research and the “real” world of democratic
in the contemporary world.
practice, where policies and local strategies are designed and civic innovation comes to life. For
blogs.newschool.edu/tcds