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About the Conference

Since its creation in 2013, the transatlantic International Research Training Group (IRTG) Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces (see http://irtg-diversity.com/) has pursued an innovative framework of analysis to explore geographic and symbolic spaces of diversity - and it will continue to do so on Sept. 13 and 14, 2014 during an international conference on "Espaces de différences: Conflits et cohabitation / Spaces of Difference: Conflicts and Cohabitation".

By arguing that there is a plurality of competing spatial frameworks at any given time and by recognizing the constructed nature of space as well as the simultaneity and fluidity of various spatial frameworks, the IRTG Diversity's research attempts to be as inclusive as possible, and to explore the mediation of difference in forms of politically defined territories on the local, the national, and the regional level.

Our actor-based approach in conjunction with the focus on specific geographic and symbolic spaces offers an innovative research heuristic for the analysis of co-existing and rival claims about the cultural meaning, construction, and appropriation of space by the multiplicity of actors living in these spaces and shaping them by their modes of interaction.

The IRTG Diversity's 2014 conference brings together renowned scholars from Europe and North America and the IRTG Diversity's PhD candidates in order to examine the potentially conflict-ridden dynamic processes that shape localities of diversity and/or transcultural spaces. The conference's four sub-sections will deal with:

1) Diversity - Entangled Histories of a Contested Concept
2) Border Crossings and Transcultural Spaces
3) Becoming and Belonging
4) Dynamics of Confrontation and Cohabitation