Announcement of a Fellowship of the project „Africa’s Asian Options - AFRASO“ at Goethe University Frankfurt
Since 2013 AFRASO has been an interdisciplinary and transregional research project at Goethe University Frankfurt funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and organized by the two area studies centers ZIAF (Center for Interdisciplinary African Studies) and IZO (Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies).
AFRASO is set up as a major research project with a national and international scope focusing on the complexity of African-Asian interactions. It has generated new knowledge on contents, forms, and implications of interactions between African and Asian protagonists on both continents and contributes to an innovative reconceptualization of area studies through its transregional focus on „Afrasian spaces“.
In the current phase, AFRASO focuses on the constitution, stabilization and transformation of Afrasian interactive spaces through the lenses of, firstly, materiality and institutionalization, and secondly, imagination and discursivity. AFRASO systematically explores, conceptualizes and theorizes transregional interstitial spaces.

We are particularly interested in research which deals with the following questions:
- How are zones and corridors as well as spaces of action and imagination established and stabilized (e.g., in terms of infrastructure)?
- How do they transform the relationship between various actors and local, national and transregional spatial orders?
- Which challenges do they pose for scholarship in transregionally conceptualized African and Asian studies?
- Which new methods need to be developed to conduct transregional research?
AFRASO is encouraging all researchers on the postdoc or professorial level wanting to engage with the Frankfurt AFRASO project to apply. The chosen fellow will have the obligation to attend the AFRASO meetings and events, give a public lecture and do a seminar meeting with AFRASO postdocs to discuss his or her current research.
Funds are available up to 7.500 € to cover all travel and other expenses for a stay from one up to three months. Please submit a letter of expression of interest, a description of the topics you want to work on during your time at Goethe University Frankfurt, and a short to CV to info@afraso.org until 15 March 2017.