image of Käte Hamburger Kolleg bids Farewell to last Visiting Research Fellow

Käte Hamburger Kolleg bids Farewell to last Visiting Research Fellow

End of March 2020 the research phase of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe will come to an end. In the last 12 years of research more than 150 international researchers visited the Kolleg to spend their time there as visiting research fellows to study religious contacts and transfers. 

Yesterday, the Käte Hamburger Kolleg said goodbye to last visiting research fellow, Iain Sinclair. The Australian expert on Buddhist civilisations of South East Asia had to depart promptly because of the international crisis caused by the spread of the Corona virus Sars-CoV-2.

Because of the current pandemia and massive cutbacks worldwide, the disbanding of the Kolleg and the farewell to all its visiting research fellows, colleagues and members of the advisory board happened to be all but planned. Already about two weeks ago the final conference of the Kolleg was postponed to later this year given the rising risk of the local spread of the Corona virus. The tightened measures in wordwide travelings, curfews in some European countries, the recent local pandemic situation and the shut-down of the Ruhr Universität Bochum did their bits: The international visiting research fellows who had been supposed to stay until end of March, had to leave Bochum immediately to their home countries. 

Hence, the active research phase of the Kolleg came to an end under circumstances - which sadly enough caused harm in masses - which reflect the global interdependency and entanglement, and yet the dynamics between Asia and Europe in their own way.