The Diversity and Gender Equality Network (DiGENet) of the Berlin University Alliance launched its visiting professorship on diversity studies in the summer semester of 2021. The “Audre Lorde-BUA-Visiting Professorship for Intersectional Diversity Studies” is named after the Caribbean-American writer, library scientist, and English professor Audre Lorde, who worked as a visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin and was repeatedly in Berlin for longer stays between 1984 and 1992. The Audre Lorde Visiting Professorship is intended to shape contemporary, future-oriented diver-sity studies for and from a hyperdiverse, post-colonial metropolis. Its aim is to make this research visible – locally as well as transnationally – and to open it up to a broader debate. The visiting professorship is further intended to uplift diverse perspectives to shape Berlin as a research hub on par with the reality of urban society. This is achieved through cooperations in research and teaching and in close collaboration between DiGENet and its junior research groups. Notably, the professorship is specifically designed to be held by scholars from the so-called “Global South”, fostering global diversity and plurality within academic systems.
Christian Richter, DiGENet Program Coordinator
Linh Müller, Coordinator Cross-Cutting Theme Diversity and Gender Equality