ECMI Launches New Regional Cluster and Appoints New Senior Researcher

The ECMI is pleased to announce the opening of a sixth research cluster in September 2022 focusing on German-Danish minority issues. The initiative will help to anchor the ECMI further in the study and promotion of regional, cross-border minority affairs.

To head up this new domain the ECMI Executive Board has appointed Dr. Martin Klatt as a Senior Researcher and Head of Cluster. Dr. Klatt is a highly accomplished scholar with a background in history, but also over the last decade in border region studies. He has published widely in outlets such as Journal of Borderlands Studies, Regional & Federal Studies, and Geopolitics, as well as contributed to numerous edited volumes and policy reports. Having previously worked for 20 years at the University of Southern Denmark and being a speaker of both German and Danish, Dr. Klatt is an established expert in this important field.

“While minority issues in the German-Danish borderlands have always been part of the ECMI’s remit, it is important for us to take this work to a new level because of the developments we are seeing in the region thanks to enhanced cross-border integration” explains ECMI Director Vello Pettai. “Moreover, Martin Klatt will bring to this work a novel commitment to ‘citizen science’ that promises to engage the region’s four minority communities more in terms of both the kinds of topics to be researched as well as who does the research.”

The new cluster comes on the heels of a 2021 decision by the ECMI’s three founders (Denmark, the German Federal Government and the Land Schleswig-Holstein) to expand the Centre’s core funding by 40%. Moreover, in 2022, Denmark decided to make an extra allocation of €100,000 to support new research initiatives and activities at the ECMI.