In post-industrial societies, due to the impact of globalisation and technological development, we are witnessing a growth and diversification of the sites of knowledge production and the ways in which a variety of actors articulate and circulate knowledge. As a result, the privileged position of ‘scientific’ knowledge is contested, making knowledge the symbolic and material capital not only of academic ‘experts’. By the same token, the authorization of ‘knowledge’ becomes a matter of debate and changing power structures. The Winter School analyses and discusses these changes from a historical, sociological, cultural and philosophical perspective. It reflects in particular on the challenges thereof for the humanities and the social sciences regarding their role in the knowledge society of (post)modernity and their contribution to larger processes of transformation.

From 2012 to 2015, with the IASH as the leading institute, the Philosophical-Historical Faculty of the University of Bern organizes four international Winter Schools of one week each. Under the thematic umbrella “TransFormations”, the Winter School concentrates on the analysis and shaping of local and global processes of change in its various forms and formations at the intersections of knowledge, history, culture and society.