In recent years, the topics of inequality and difference have sparked controversial and sometimes heated public debates. Criticism of discrimination and marginalization is facing an increasing number of conservative counterforces. In addition to these political debates, inequality and difference are receiving renewed attention in humanities and social science research. Since Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", numerous studies on the structures of economic and social inequality have emerged. Since the 1980s, activists and researchers have pointed out that treatments of inequality based on race, class, and gender cannot be separated intersectionally. Recently, the practices of inequality and difference have been examined more frequently from a global and comparative perspective.

This research seminar provides a platform to explore methodological concepts, phenomena, and historical categories of inequality and difference based on one's own research. Which concepts and methods from inequality research can you use to design your own study? Which historical concepts of inequality and difference can be identified in your research topic, and how can these concepts be analyzed historically and critically?

In what ways do alternative concepts of individual or social coexistence become visible through demonstrations of difference?

This seminar is based on doctoral students' research projects and is intended to be an interactive workshop for jointly analyzing and discussing concepts and phenomena of inequality and difference in their respective works.

Dates for the block course: November 7 and 8, and November 28 and 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the University of Lucerne.

Doctoral students who would like to present their work as part of the course should register by September 23 via gsl@unilu.ch.