CENTERS AND PUBLICATIONS
Transregional Center for Democratic Studies
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For 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
New York and eastern Europe, a site of ongoing
and graduate or advanced undergraduate
democratic transformation that reveals the
study that can promote better understanding
vulnerability of democracy to illiberal solutions
of the world. TCDS cultivates research on the
and even violence. The center’s initiatives have
increasingly globalized public sphere and the
led to the emergence of extensive scholarly
emergence of autonomous publics and nurtures
networks in the region, bringing young scholars
a new kind of citizen-researcher concerned
and civically committed academics together
with the ways society, embedded in a specific
with NSSR graduate students.
cultural and historical context, debates and seeks solutions to shared problems. The center’s programs (public events,
TCDS’s flagship program is the Democracy & Diversity Institute, held annually in July in Wrocław, Poland. The institute is an
workshops, conferences, and summer institutes
intensive three-week program of study in
conducted in New York City and abroad)
which up to 40 young civic-minded scholars
facilitate study, research, and debates on the
engage through discussion and debate
challenges of democracy and democratization
in a rigorous quest for a deeper and more
and the related issues of development,
nuanced understanding of the challenges to
citizenship, and intercultural conversation
democracy in the contemporary world.
in a globalized world. The programs are also aimed at building bridges between academic
blogs.newschool.edu/tcds
research and the “real” world of democratic
tcds@newschool.edu
practice, where policies and local strategies are designed and civic innovation comes to life.
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
Building on the interdisciplinary tradition of
