The Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21) is an interdisciplinary research institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen. It is the newest of ten Käte Hamburger centres engaged in international research in the humanities and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The Centre studies the cultural premises and dynamics of emerging global governance and asks how these might be translated into global cooperation. Underpinning its core research themes is the question of how best to organize processes of global governance, given a backdrop of political-cultural difference and global problems. These core research-themes provide the focus for four distinct research units:

Research Unit 1: The (Im)Possibility of Cooperation

This unit considers the possibility of global cooperation from the point of view of the humanities and the social and natural sciences. Research here focuses on the conditions for successful cooperation and the factors facilitating this. Research unit 1 asks whether it is possible for human capacities for cooperation to be scaled up to the global level.

Research Unit 2: Global Cultural Conflicts and Transcultural Cooperation

Working from an interdisciplinary perspective, research unit 2 attempts to understand how differences in culture and religion may facilitate or obstruct global cooperation. Research here is geared to the gift-exchange model.

 Research Unit 3: Global Governance Revisited

Research in unit 3 centres on the question: In the absence of a world government, how is the world being governed? The unit aims to adapt and deepen knowledge of global governance and to ask what impact the increasing heterogeneity in political and professional cultures is having on that governance.

Research Unit 4: Paradoxes and Perspectives of Democratisation

This unit focuses on the relationship between democracy and global cooperation in the context of the current challenges to democratization in world politics. It attempts to identify the contradictions of, and opportunities opened up by, global cooperation in a post-national democratic order.

The Centre provides a setting within which internationally renowned scholars from different disciplines can investigate the opportunities and challenges associated with global cooperation in a culturally diverse world society. It aims to develop blueprints for a culturally open world society and a legitimate world politics. It seeks close dialogue with policy-makers, practitioners, and representatives of civil society and aims to disseminate its findings and promote discussion with and between its own international research fellows, practitioners in the field, and interested member of the general public.