The Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) is a competence centre at Saarland University closely associated with the Cluster for European Research (CEUS) and the activities of the University of the Greater Region (UniGR).
It belongs to the network of Käte Hamburger Centres funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and also fosters lively exchange with the Maria Sibylla Merian Centres, such as the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in Tunis. In partnership with Saarland University, the KHK CURE works to host at-risk scholars through the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
At the heart of the centre’s research are individual projects by scholars and artists from around the globe who join as fellows. Institutional collaborations and partnerships mainly develop through research focus areas or specific projects tied to the fellow residencies of up to one year. The centre’s international and transdisciplinary Academic Advisory Board facilitates a global network beyond existing European-Atlantic structures of cutting-edge research.
To realize its key aims and programmes, the centre maintains long-term collaborations with select institutions: as the centre operates as an institute for advanced study welcoming visiting scholars from the postdoctoral stage onward, integrating younger scholars into its activities is also an important priority. In this spirit, CURE, together with a network of partners, hosts an annual summer school for doctoral students and early career postdocs from around the world at Villa Vigoni – the German-Italian Centre for European Dialogue – on Lake Como. This summer school is co-organized with the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin (ZfL), in cooperation with the Paris research centre Theory and History of the Arts and Literatures of Modernity – THALIM (CNRS/New Sorbonne University), the University of Naples Federico II, and the University of Trieste. The latter is also a member of the Transform4Europe university alliance, which is led by Saarland University.
An additional key mission of the Käte Hamburger Centre CURE is its ongoing collaboration with civil society. Major long-term partners for cultural and social events and programs include the UNESCO World Heritage Site Völklingen Ironworks, the Saarland State Theatre, the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg, and the House of World Cultures (HKW) in Berlin.
