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Kategorie: Projekte

Dancing Across Time and Space: Mysticism, the City, and the Body in Tunisia

Souad Matoussi in conversation with Julius Dihstelhoff. Mystical dances in Tunisia are not relics of a distant past. They are living practices that continue to shape urban life today. Moving from sacred zawiyas to private homes and public stages, they connect bodies, memories, and the city across time. This interview with Souad Matoussi shows how these practices function as cultural resources, sites of negotiation, and forms of collective imagination. Mysticism is not outside modern urban life. It is one of the ways cities are continuously produced and reimagined.

Writing Poetry and Writing Criticism are not at all Distinct Categories of Creation ‒ 5in10 with Ammar Kandeel

Ammar Kandeel is a literary and art critic whose work lies at the intersection of visual culture, decolonial studies, and literary/art theory. His main research area spans issues of Palestinian transnational creations and self-representations. He earned his PhD from the University of Montpellier 3 with a dissertation analyzing Edward Said’s writing of the critical discourse on orientalism. Recipient of postdoctoral mobilities (funded by the FMSH, ACSS, UNIMED, and Columbia Global Centers – Amman), Ammar’s research focuses on Palestinian testimonial strategies and agency across various mediums. In the academic year 2025/26, he is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.

OPERAS: A new home for cOAlition S 

We are deeply honoured to announce that OPERAS was appointed as new Host Secretariat of cOAlitionS. OPERAS shares cOAlition S’ commitment to full and immediate Open Access and has a long-standing role in strengthening open scholarly communication in Europe through community building, policy coordination, and shared infrastructure.

What We Are Trying to Return Is Stories’

Alia Mossallam and Britta Lange in Conversation with Olga Schubert. Both Mossallam and Lange have done extensive research on two sound archives: the Berlin Sound Archive at Humboldt University Berlin (Lautarchiv) and the Berlin Phonogram Archive at the Ethnological Museum Berlin, which is now part of the Humboldt Forum. Both of these archives hold recordings of prisoners of war who were held captive by the Germans during the First World War.

Beyond Binaries: Decentring Foreign Knowledge in 20th Century Korea History

By Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus. Drawing on the history of education in 20th century (South) Korea, this essay examines the historical development and adaption of foreign epistemologies and knowledge systems in Korea. While postcolonial theory, developed primarily against the backdrop of Western colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, India, and the Middle East, has proved fundamentally useful in questioning dichotomies, exposing asymmetrical power relations, and highlighting the agency of colonised people, it remains largely confined to a binary framework of Euro-American coloniser and non-European colonised. This dichotomy fails to fully capture the complex historical reality in East Asia.

Omeljan Pritsak and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University – a Conversation with Andrii Portnov

Andrii Portnov is an historian and Professor at the Pilecki-Institute in Warsaw. In 2015, he initiated and co-founded a Berlin-Brandenburg Ukraine Initiative (BBUI), which in 2016 became the PRISMA UKRAЇNA Research Network Eastern Europe at the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin. In 2023, he was elected full professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Free University. His most recent book publication is: “Omeljan Pritsak and the Intellectual Origins of the Ukrainian ‘Harvard Miracle’” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2026).

When Gender Identity Becomes State Certification

By Bhavya Johari. On March 30, 2026, a day before International Transgender Day of Visibility and five months after India secured its seventh term on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for 2026-2028, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act received Presidential assent. The Amendment replaces self-determination with mandatory certification by medical boards. This potentially invalidates the legal recognition of thousands of individuals who obtained certificates under the self-identification framework. The paradox this exposes is foundational: States can systematically violate norms while occupying positions meant to uphold them.

Systems of Conflictivity

By Andréa Gill. In places where violence functions as the norm sustaining systemic inequalities – and, hence, not as a moment of exception or as the occasional breakdown of order – it becomes necessary to reconceive the peace and conflict archives in ways which take into account structural insecurity and socio-economic precarisation. From the perspective of postcolonies, we can perceive the multiple and imbricated ways in which conflict springs from the inequality embedded in relations of power. The concept of ‘systems of conflictivity’ enables us to grasp, then, the determinants of violence as a continuum in a manner which linear causality (of periodisation and events) fails to do so.

Are Migrants’ Rights (still) Human Rights? Protection & Exclusion amid the Crisis of Liberalism in the Americas

By Farid Dabour. In February 2026, scholars from Latin America and Europe met at the Latin American Institute of Freie Universität Berlin for the workshop Are Migrants’ Rights (still) Human Rights? Protection & Exclusion amid the Crisis of Liberalism in the Americas, organized by Professor Luisa Feline Freier (FU Berlin) and the Department of Political Science. The conference focused on a timely question: what happens to migrants’ rights when liberal democracies are under pressure, hemispheric orders are shifting, and the authority of human rights institutions is increasingly contested?

Cynical Uses of Suffering: Gaza, Antisemitism, & the New Digital Right

By Aya Labanieh. The landscape of the Anglophone Internet itself, especially in North America, drifted rightward—rewarding influencers who churned out pandemic disinformation and conspiracy theories with high engagement, fame, and easy income. The popular term online for such a person is a “grifter”: someone who betrays their convictions, political or otherwise, for material gain, transforming what they claim to believe based on what is trending or what sells. While one can never be sure what a particular influencer truly believes, especially since many content-creators became as radicalized as their own audiences during lockdown, grifters can serve as useful indicators of where money can be made online.

Choice Illusions: Through ‘Rule by Law’ to ‘Electoral Capture’ in Hungary and Poland?

By Stefan Szwed. National populist leaders across the EU, and in particular governments in backsliding Members States such as Hungary under Fidesz and Poland under PiS, like to proclaim themselves as true representatives of the people. They pit the principle of popular choice against the demands of the rule of law, defined among others as protection against abuses of majority rule. This exploratory research examines how ‘strongmen’ in office undermine the rule of law to not only advance their illiberal agendas, but also lower the risk of losing future ballots. Across key aspects of the process, it considers how the pair had laid foundations to game if not capture electoral competition.

Food is Where all my Interests Meet – 5in10 with Omri Polatsek

Omri Polatsek is a historian of science, technology, and the environment, with a regional focus on Egypt and the Middle East. He is a doctoral student at the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities” at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and a researcher at the “History of Technology” Department at the Technische Universität Berlin. Before joining EUME, Omri was an affiliated researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. He holds an MA in Global History from Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from Tel Aviv University.

Convertir a la música en un negocio

Ornela Boix focuses on music fairs in Latin America over the last 15 years, aiming to contribute to an understanding of the formation of music markets that transcend national borders, against a backdrop of transformation in the music industry driven by digitalisation. Drawing on a theoretical framework that emphasises the social, convivial and unequal nature of the art worlds and their markets, and an ethnographic approach, the text situates the emergence and development of these fairs historically at the intersection of processes of change within the music industry’s business model, public cultural policies, cultural activism, Latin American regionalism and the relationship between art and capitalism. The article specifically examines the role of educational activities (workshops, conferences) in the production of narratives about the contemporary music industry, which have consequences for the ways in which actors behave and for the very constitution of music markets. In this way, the article outlines the cultural dimension of these markets.

Bumantara and a World Federation. Revisiting Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana’s Ideas on a Culture of Inclusion in Times of Crisis

By Fathun Karib. Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (1908–1994) was a prominent Indonesian author and intellectual who developed an alternative term for the Southeast Asian area. This article will focus on examining his concept of Bumantara – a combination of the words Bumi (land) and Antara (in between) – and delve into his proposal for a “World Federation” as a solution for addressing ongoing global crises. Bumantara and the World Federation refer to specific territorial units that offer alternative opportunities for those living in this era.