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About the Institute

The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity is one of the foremost centers for the multi-disciplinary study of diversity, in its multiple forms, in today’s globalizing world.

INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANISATIONS

The focus here is on the state at different levels, social and legal categorizations and meso-level organisations. Do organisations and political institutions reflect diversity? Are they open or closed to change?

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AND ATTITUDES

How do different groups perceive the diversification of their cities, neighbourhoods, societies? How inclusive or exclusive are encounters and social interactions and what determines that?

INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCES

Dynamics surrounding migration and diversity take many forms. What do the experiences of migration and diversification mean to individuals? How is that determined by age, gender, racism? What identifications develop in different contexts and interactions?

INSIGHTS@mpimmg

In INSIGHTS@mpimmg, our researchers give brief 3 minute insights into their work: what they research, how they do it and why it is significant.

News & Updates

How diverse is your neighbourhood?

The new Superdiversity project website shows immigration and census data into interactive graphics and maps that showcase Canada’s changing landscapes and how socioeconomic indicators such as wealth, income, employment status and education play out across ethnic groups, generations of newcomers and neighbourhoods.

Superdiversity

October 22, 2024

Literaturherbst

In a talk with journalist Georg Dietz, Steven Vertovec spoke about his book ‘Superdiversität’ (Suhrkamp Verlag 2024). The term coined by Vertovec helps to understand how the increasing diversification processes in modern societies develop. The discussion was held in English as part of the Göttinger Literaturherbst 2024.

Book Launch

On April 29, Amanda Lubit will present her new book “Life as a Migrant Muslim Woman in Sectarian Northern Ireland: An Exploration of Gender, Visibility, Movement and Place”. This book launch is a collaboration with the Centre for Global Migration Studies (CeMig).

New Podcast Series

The podcast series “Beyond Encounters” is a production of the “Encounters: Muslim-Jewish relations in urban Europe” research project, where a team of researchers did research on Jewish-Muslim relations in six European cities.

Superdiversity. Migration and Social Complexity

This new book Superdiversity by Steven Vertovec presents a convincing case for recognizing new social formations created by changing migration patterns and calls for a re-thinking of public policy and social scientific approaches to social difference.
The Open Access version is now available at www.taylorfrancis.com.

MPI-MMG in Dialogue

In the MPI-MMG in Dialogue series, Chang Won Lee, Gracia Liu-Farrer, Anja Weiss and Junjia Ye discussed ‘Migration, Retention & Incorporation of the Highly Skilled’ on 18 December 2024. The event was moderated by Helena Hof.
The next InDialogue will take place on May 20, 2025 under the title “How Immigration can be made popular”.

Insights@MPIMMG

November 06, 2024

In this series, our researchers give brief 3 minute insights into their work: what they research, how they do it and why it is significant. This time: Vanessa Rau on “Love and diversity”.

Forthcoming Events

Openness, human rights, and equality: When and how they have been advanced in European migration policies

Workshop organized by Ulrike Bialas, Jennifer Elrick, Karen Schönwälder and Phil Triadafilopoulos

May 8, 2025 - May 9, 2025

MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, Göttingen

ALUMNI HOUR | Sakura Yamamura (Aachen University): "Pausing, pivoting and persevering - building a track of your own in migration research and beyond"

Sakura Yamamura (Aachen University)

May 13, 2025 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)

Zoom Meeting

MPI-MMG in Dialogue "How Immigration can be made popular"

Public discussion

May 20, 2025 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)

MPI-MMG, Goettingen, Room: Hybrid event: Livestream/ Live, Hermann Föge Weg 11

MPI-MMG @ Conferences

▪	Steven Vertovec about "Cultural Demography of Diversity" Expert Online Workshop on Cultural Demography April 30, 2025 \| Population Europe, Berlin
▪	Madeline Bass: "Black geographies and Indigenous knowledges; ethnographies of Afroeurope" Anthropology and the Black Experience May 14-18, 2025 \| Dakar, Senegal
▪	Yael Peled Workshop “Intersection of Linguistic Justice and Epistemic Injustice: A Decolonial Perspective” May 15-16, 2025 \| Tilburg University
▪	Nicolas Fliess: "Pride and Prejudice: Impact of National Days on Patriotism and Attitudes Toward Immigrants " Workshop "Identity & Conflict" June 11-14, 2025 \| Delphi, Greece
▪	Nicolas Fliess: "Pride and Prejudice: Impact of National Days on Patriotism and Attitudes Toward Immigrants " 2025 Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association June 26-28, 2025 \| Madrid, Spain

MPI-MMG in Dialogue

Our series of events on new research findings and current debates will continue. We will be discussing superdiversity, German migration policy, diversity assent and age and migration. Videos of previous In Dialogue events can be found here.

all events

Career & Calls

Job Offers

Currently we do not have any vacancies.

CALL FOR BOOK PROPOSALS

Palgrave Macmillan
Global Diversities

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Recent MMG Publications | Monographs and Edited Volumes

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-64725-3

https://www.routledge.com/Superdiversity-Migration-and-Social-Complexity/Vertovec/p/book/9780415834636#sup

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/aspiring-in-later-life/9781978830400

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo208300969.html

https://www.bpb.de/shop/buecher/schriftenreihe/519287/religionsverfassungsrecht-revisited/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/schooling-the-nation/C17A639E1EF9E1448842B6ACEA6216F5

https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-eu-migrant-generation-in-asia

https://profilebooks.com/work/how-to-live-with-each-other/

Special Issues

Druez, É., Peretz, D., & Shaw, D. (Eds.). (2025). Special Issue: Boundary work in Muslim-Jewish encounters in urban Europe [Special Issue]. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 28(1). Link

Journal Articles

Udo, F., Gordon, S., Naidu, M., & Membele, G. (2025). Mapping public art to explore the decolonization and Africanization of space in the inner city of Durban, South Africa. South African Geographical Journal, Ahead of print, 1-22. Link

Barros, V. (2025). How to work with Niklas Luhmann? A practical guide. Acta Sociologica, OnlineFirst, pp. 1-10. Link

Tahiiev, A. (2025). Application of Shia Islamic law in contemporary legal systems. Laws, 14(2): 23, pp. 1-18. Link

Vertovec, S. (2025). Afterword: reflecting on influences. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Ahead-of-print, pp. 1-5. Link

Gidley, B., Everett, S. S., Druez, E., Ebbiary, A., Emmerich, A., Peretz, D., et al. (2025). Off and on stage interactions: Muslim-Jewish encounter in urban Europe. Ethnicities, 25(2), 235-254. Link

Riedel, M., & Rau, V. (2025). Religion and race: The need for an intersectional approach. Identities, 1-21. Link

Sobhy, H. (2025). We don’t have diversity here, but inequality, that’s in the design of the education system: Tunisian teachers, diversification and the defunding of education. global-e. Series: Diversifying Global Education, 16(1). Link

Cusmano, M. (2025). Generation matters: The role of migration and generational status for distributive justice preferences. SocArXiv Papers. Link

Emmerich, A. (2025). Urban renewal, contested memories and the politics of cultural production: The case of Jewish–Muslim encounters in Germany. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 28(1), 40-59. Link

Lang, C., & Badenhoop, E. (2025). Civil society organisations and the local politics of migration: how funding contexts matter. Comparative Migration Studies, 13: 3. Link

Contributions to a collected Edition

Torno, S. (2025). "We are not doing well and this is my fault." Care, intergenerational relations and the wellbeing of older adults in Tajikistan. In M. De Loenzien, & A. Varrel (Eds.), Asie en care / Asia in care (pp. 105-122). Paris: CNRS Éditions. Link

Emmerich, A., & Ebbiary, A. (2025). Becoming Salafi. In M. Bano (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to women and Islam (pp. 151-173). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Link

Tahiiev, A. (2024). Shia Muslims of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. In E. Muratova, & N. Zasanska (Eds.), Minorities at war: cultural identity and resilience in Ukraine. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group. Link

Schönwälder, K., & Petermann, S. (2024). Vielfalt aus Sicht der Bevölkerung: eine alltägliche Normalität. In F. Gesemann, D. Filsinger, & S. Münch (Eds.), Handbuch Lokale Integrationspolitik (pp. 1-13). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Link

Book Publications 2024

Martijn van den Brink (2024). Legislative Authority and Interpretation in the European Union. Oxford University Press.
Bob van der Linden (2024). Romantic Nationalism in India: Cultivation of Culture and the Global Circulation of Ideas. Brill.
Seyla Benhabib and Ayelet Shachar (forthcoming in December 2024). Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects: Migration, Asylum, and Shifting Borders. Cambridge University Press.
Dana Schmalz (forthcoming in January 2025). Das Bevölkerungsargument: Wie die Sorge vor zu vielen Menschen Politik beeinflusst. Suhrkamp.
Bob van der Linden (forthcoming in 2025). Cultivating Sikh Culture and Identity: Art, Music and Philology. Routledge.

Appointment / Career

2025

Damián Omar Martínez | Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Granada (Spain)

Grants & Awards

► Neena Mahadev was awarded the Clifford Geertz Prize for 2024 from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR, a section of AAA) https://mailchi.mp/ircpl/news-events-from-the-ircpl-at-columbia-10594969?e=724542c624
► Dora Sampaio was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project RETIREWEL: Retirement across countries: A tripartite analysis of the welfare state, family care networks, and the retirement industry.

Online Media

The City Show

Podcast

The City show is a podcast about complexity and how people live and adapt to life in fast-changing cities across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Blogs

Researchers from the institute describe the development of their projects and the challenges, delights and frustrations of conducting social scientific research.

Online Lectures

Video

Here you will find videos from lectures given by distinguished researchers at the MPI MMG.

Diversity Interviews

Here you will find transcripts of interviews with distinguished scientists, led by staff members of the MMG.

MPI-MMG linked Journals

NEW DIVERSITIES

New Diversities is an international, peer reviewed, scholarly and professional journal, published by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Global Networks

Global Networks publishes high quality, peer-reviewed research on global networks, transnational affairs and practices, and their relation to wider theories of globalization. The journal provides a forum for discussion, debate and the refinement of key ideas in this emerging field.

CityScapes

CityScapes is a 144 page biannual print publication. It is a hybrid of forms, simultaneously invested in scholarly discourse around contemporary urbanism in Africa and the Global South, as much as individual everyday experiences and activities of the multitude of actors that are actively involved in shaping cities across the continent and the rest of the developing world.

All social scientific research at the Institute, particularly concerning informed consent and involving visual materials, is designed to follow the ethical guidelines formulated by the American Anthropological Association (see http://www.aaanet.org/... ).

All material on the Institute’s website is protected by copyright. If you wish to use material from the website, please contact our Research Coordinator, Dr. Norbert Winnige (winnige(at)mmg.mpg.de).