WHO WE ARE
The Center for Comparative Research on Democracy (CCRD) is a research center at the Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The CCRD was founded in January 2021 and is funded by Stiftung Mercator and Einstein Foundation Berlin. The CCRD is committed to promoting a robust and nuanced understanding of democracy, the conditions for a sustainable democratic life as well as processes of de-democratization and autocratization.
The Center has four main pillars: Contemporary Turkey Studies, Einstein Fellows Research Group, Academic Freedom Network, and Judicial Autonomy under Authoritarian Attack, an Einstein Research Project.
WHAT WE DO
The primary goal of the CCRD is to advance the understanding of democracy through the conduct of interdisciplinary and comparative research. The Center is dedicated to promoting a deeper and more nuanced understanding of democracy by bringing together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, incuding political science, sociology, philosophy, and law, to study the complex and multifaced nature of democracy.
The Center's research activities include organizing workshops and conferences, fostering international collaborations, and supporting graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The CCRD also engages policy makers and the broader public through its outreach activities, such as public lectures, book events, roundtable discussions.
Through innovative research, the Center fosters the study of contemporary Turkey to strengthen the place of Turkey studies in social scientific research in Germany and Europe. It provides opportunities and platforms for scholars at risk and facilitates the exchange of ideas on academic freedom. It also creates a hub for comparative research on issues of (de-)democratization in Europe and beyond.
