ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry

The ICI Berlin is an independent research centre dedicated to exploring how diverse cultures can be brought into productive rather than pernicious confrontation. The Institute enacts an expansive and deliberately dissonant understanding of culture that includes cultural formations (involving categories of class, gender, sexuality, and race) as well as fields of knowledge production (science, art, economics, law, media, politics). It defines itself through a series of interlocking core projects that are designed to traverse different disciplines and foster theoretical and critical interventions of cultural inquiry. The ICI Berlin understands itself as a catalyst of radical reflection within a larger research landscape in Berlin and beyond, frequently also as a link between scholarship, cultural work, artistic practices, and activism. Postdoctoral fellows are invited from across the globe to spend two years at the Institute to pursue their individual projects in varied disciplines, but also to shape, advance, and probe the Institute’s core project in a weekly research colloquium as well as by collaboratively organizing workshops, symposia, and conferences. Fellowships are usually advertised every other year for a particular core project. Applications can only be considered when received during the application period. Parallel to its ongoing research colloquium, the ICI Berlin organizes a variety of performances, panel discussions, art events, and readings, welcoming diverse audiences living in or passing through Berlin. It also welcomes cooperations with partner institutions and other research projects. Founded in 2006 as a private non-profit organization, the ICI Berlin is situated in Prenzlauer Berg on the border to Berlin-Mitte within the Pfefferberg Complex, a former brewery turned into a cultural and social centre. It has several private and public spaces for research, conversation, and exchange, including a research library for staff and fellows.