CO-CONSTRUCTING OMAN:
Global Knowledge Production and the Making of National Identity

In this interdisciplinary summer school organized by scholars from the universities of Mainz, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and their research collaborators in Oman, we wish to foster an interactive engagement with contemporary forms of knowledge production about Oman. Building upon recent work within Science Studies, which foregrounds the political nature of science and recognizes its contribution to our world as much as it describes it, we will discuss how international and interdisciplinary scientific practices, national science and policy, and publics intersect and interfere with each other. By asking which disciplines and perspectives have come to dominate knowledge production about Oman, who and what remains excluded or sidelined, and how this may be challenged by new ways of engaging local communities through citizen science, we will encourage a critical reflection on research in and on Oman which challenges the longstanding boundaries between North and South, past and present, science and humanities.

This summer school is generously supported by the Volkswagen Foundation as part of the „Researching Research“ programme.