Sören Urbansky - global dis:connect

the centre
- The Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, investigates globalisation as a dynamic process shaped by the interplay of integration, disconnection, and disintegration. Our work focuses on understanding how connections emerge, fail, or remain absent, in both historical and contemporary contexts.
- the centre
research
- global dis:connect approaches globalisation through the lens of dis:connectivity, focusing on absences, detours and interruptions that shape historical and contemporary global processes. Rather than assuming linear integration, we examine the gaps, delays and disruptions that make globalisation uneven and socially significant.
  
  Our research is structured around six key areas – absences, detours, interruptions, laboratories, cultural infrastructures and temporalities – which foster interdisciplinary dialogue without normative assumptions or claims of completeness.
- research
fellows
- The cornerstone of global dis:connect is the fellowship programme, in which approximately ten scholars come to Munich each year. They research dis:connectivity on site and in close contact with the directors and their peers. Fellows also have the opportunity to host workshops on the topics of their research.
- fellows
events
- Here is where to find out about coming events, new publications, press releases and other news from global dis:connect.
- events
outreach
- At global dis:connect, research is meant to circulate. Through publications, media formats and artist events, we connect academic research with public debate and artistic perspectives.
- outreach
  - gd:c blog
  - static
  - podcast
- global dis:connect publishes innovative interventions on dis:connectivity across a range of media, from the blog, which covers the latest news, research and art at gd:c, to static, a periodical containing the best work from within and beyond global dis:connect, in addition to traditional scholarly formats.
- publications
  - aperiodic open-access publications

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Sören Urbansky

Sören holds the Chair of East European History at the Ruhr University in Bochum. He specialises in Chinese-Russian relations, migration, infrastructure, racism and border history. He previously worked at the German Historical Institute Washington, where he headed its Pacific Office based at UC Berkeley. He has also held research and teaching positions at the universities of Freiburg, Cambridge and Munich. Sören has authored four monographs, including Beyond the Steppe Frontier (2020) and, with Martin Wagner, Entangled Empires (2026).

Sören joined global dis:connect as a joint fellow with Historisches Kolleg.

The Yellow Peril: a discourse and its Pacific echoes

Sören’s project explores the relationship between migration and race in the Russian (Soviet) Far East and North America. Focusing on Vladivostok and San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century, it examines how negative stereotypes fuelled conflict between Chinese and European communities across the Pacific, shaping social, political and cultural relations. Based on research conducted in multiple countries, it moves beyond discourse analysis to trace how xenophobic fears structured interethnic conflict, while also highlighting strategies of resistance among the Chinese diaspora.

Have a look at Sören’s research poster about his project.

Contact

Click HERE to mail Sören and HERE for a list of his publications.