Global Urban History

Abstract

This volume goes back to an international conference held at the end of November 2015 at Leipzig University on the occasion of 10th anniversary of the Erasmus Mundus Master‘s Course in Global Studies (EMGS) and therefore originates in the early 2000s when this programme was established. Almost 250 EMGS alumni, students, lectures, as well as programme organizers and further participants from all continents attended the conference, celebrating a decade of growth in the number of students, of disciplines involved, of professional fields occupied by alumni, and of new global challenges emerging from current affairs integrated into the curriculum. In short, the success story, which was worth a moment of reflection upon the causes of success and future tasks for further improvement of the programme. The aim of the conference was to discuss in a comparative manner how the specific version of Global Studies practiced in the EMGS programme has developed over the past years and how this relates to the development of the field in general. We therefore thought it would be greatly valuable to integrate the experiences of our alumni into this book.

Biographical Note

Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig University)

Geert Castryck is a historian specializing in African and global history. He did research on African urban history, remembrance education, and colonial legacies. He earned his PhD in history from Ghent University in 2006 for his dissertation about the colonial Muslim communities of Bujumbura (Burundi). He came to Leipzig University in 2010 to write a global history of the East Central African town of Kigoma-Ujiji. At the Collaborative Research Centre, he analyses the redefinition of political, economic, and religious spaces in East and Central Africa as well as in Europe during and after the Scramble for Africa.