Funded by German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst DAAD)

Funding period: 2020 – 2021

The twenty-four-month project “The Quest for a ‘Good Life’: Livelihood Strategies in Iran and Germany” is a continuation of the project “The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Resources: Iranian and German Perspectives” from 2018. The current project aims at long-term and sustainable cooperation in research, teaching and supervision between Iranian and German universities and research institutions:

 Department of English, Department of Sociology: Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM)

 Department of Sociology, Department of Counseling; University of Isfahan (UI)

 Amayesh and Tose e Shargh and Amirkabir Research Center of Mashhad

 Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology; Goethe University Frankfurt (GU)

 Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology; Goethe University Frankfurt (GU)

The project will enable these institutions to bring together their respective expertise in the training of students and early career researchers (ECRs) and to integrate new teaching formats into the graduate curriculum.

The project consists of a joint preparatory seminar and two field studies, which will strengthen research-based learning (RBL) and cultural exchange. In addition, a master class for academic writing and publishing will be held to highlight the specifics of the challenges of international academic publishing in the German and Iranian contexts. A “research incubator” will support the development of successful funding proposals and thus achieving the medium and long-term sustainability of the infrastructures created in this project.

All these activities are carried out under the main theme “The Quest for a ‘Good Life”, which concentrates on three specific thematic areas:

- Ecological foundations of life in the Anthropocene: the reconfiguration of human-nature relationships in the face of environmental destruction

- Alternative lifestyles: Norms and strategies in changing socio-cultural relationships

- Aesthetic practices and the search for better livelihoods.

The aim is to gain knowledge of how actors refer to certain norms, violate or evade them, but also demand a revision of these norms and thereby initiate socio-cultural changes. With this approach, we hope to gain a better understanding of the contradictory and conflicting processes of socio-cultural transformation that are currently taking place in both countries. Most importantly, it aims to promote an intercultural dialogue.

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