First International Conference of the Max Planck Fellow Group ‘Connectivity in Motion: Port Cities of the Indian Ocean’

The first international conference of the Max Planck Fellow Group ‘Connectivity in Motion: Port Cities of the Indian Ocean’, headed by Burkhard Schnepel, takes place from October 16th to October 18th in Halle/Saale

The conference is entitled “Connectivity in Motion: New Studies on the Indian Ocean World” and will examine the socio-cultural and historical dimensions of movements across the Indian Ocean. For this intellectual pursuit, port cities and small islands of the Indian Ocean are taken as prime foci and starting points for social anthropological, ethno-historical and historical research. The conference acknowledges that the macro-region of the Indian Ocean is one of the oldest and most important trade and contact zones in the world, but it does not see its importance as only historical. At present, the Indian Ocean is re-emerging as a significant arena of globalization. By taking the Indian Ocean as a frame of reference and applying a transregional perspective to the idea of ‘connectivity in motion’, the conference will seek to achieve new insights into the problematic of globalization.