(09.05.14) As part of his trip to Mexico City on 22 April, the DFG President, Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider and the General Director of the National Mexican Council for Research and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT), Prof. Dr. Enrique Cabrero Mendoza, signed a new collaboration agreement to facilitate joint financing of not only new and individual German-Mexican projects but also coordinated funding programmes such as Research Units and Collaborative Research Centres. The new agreement replaces one concluded in 1991 between the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and CONACYT.

At the signing ceremony at CONACYT, Professor Strohschneider and Professor Cabrero Mendoza emphasised that the new agreement would open up new opportunities for German and Mexican researchers and give greater flexibility to their collaboration.

On his visit to the Colegio de México, Prof. Strohschneider and representatives of CONACYT were shown the results achieved by the German-Mexican International Research Training Group (IRTG) "Between Spaces. Movements, Actors and Representations of Globalisation". Prof. Strohschneider's visit coincided with the start of the IRTG's new project phase (2014-2018). In his opening speech, Prof. Strohschneider drew attention to the fact that this is the first IRTG to be funded in collaboration with a Latin-American country. The IRTG demonstrates that the globalisation process is not restricted to commercial and financial issues, but is also a significant factor in the exchange of knowledge and that the interaction in this IRTG between Europe and Latin America could be held up as an example of "spaces of globalisation".

The "Between Spaces" IRTG, the first with a Latin American country, stimulates contributions to research into globalisation, with the focus on movement between different regions of the world and the associated uncovering of new spaces in three phases of globalisation: the colonial period, the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the present. The research programme draws on transnational approaches developed in the study of history and other social and cultural disciplines in the last decade. The close collaboration between the two host universities, the Freie Universität Berlin and El Colegio de México, and other German and Mexican research institutions (University of Potsdam, the Humboldt University of Berlin, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – UNAM, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social – CIESAS) allows different views of the globalisation process to be brought together and thus yield valuable material for joint empirical research and for the development of theories.