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Kategorie: TRAFO

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

“One of the most striking challenges I encounter in theology is its rigidity and binary thinking” – 5in10 with Abeer Khshiboon

Abeer Khshiboon is a scholar specializing in intersections of religiosities, indigeneities, and postcolonial studies. She received her first MA in Education from the University of Haifa, a second MA in Jewish Theology from the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam. Her doctoral research at the Theological Faculty, Humboldt University of Berlin deals with the historical trauma of Christian internally displaced Palestinians, which deepened her appreciation for local cultures of remembrance and resilience.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Poor Connections

By Jeremy F. Walton. In this contribution to the “Beyond Guidelines” Series, Jeremy F. Walton sheds light on a neglected aspect of the heavily ethicized field of European academia: the manner in which research ethics as a fantasy of best academic practice abets and exacerbates longstanding regional hierarchies among nation-states, and fundamentally complicates the professional lives of scholars who mediate between pan-European discourses and local institutions. There are connections here that have yet to be adequately grasped.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Academic Freedom in Tunisia: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Challenges

In this conversation, Emna Beltaief, Vice President of the Université de Tunis, speaks with Julius Dihstelhoff, MECAM’s Academic Coordinator, on the state of academic freedom in Tunisia. They explore the historical trajectory from the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes to the post-2011 era, discussing the persistent tensions between academic freedom and political pressures.  Emna Beltaïef emphasizes the urgent need to protect academic spaces from political interference to ensure a thriving, critical academic environment.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Why Ukrainians Return: Motivations of Return Migration and its Implications

By Alexander Sicheneder. The decision to return for many Ukrainians is driven by a combination of emotional-political, social, and economic factors. To fully harness the potential of its diaspora for post-war recovery, Ukraine must adopt a holistic approach that addresses the economic and social needs of its returnees while cultivating a shared sense of purpose in the country’s reconstruction efforts. By doing so, Ukraine can turn the tragedy of displacement into an opportunity for renewal and growth.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Le patrimoine culturel judéo-arabe de Tunisie : Une identité meurtrie et une diversité linguistique menacée, 5in10 avec Hala Ben Mbarek

Hala Ben Mbarek est maître de conférences en langue et littérature hébraïques modernes au Département d’études arabes de l’Université de Tunis. Ses recherches portent sur la littérature hébraïque et comparée, la contribution des genres populaires à la construction des identités juives modernes, et les littératures comparées arabe-hébraïque modernes, le multilinguisme en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Decolonizing Academia at MIASA and MECAM: Academic Freedom and Research Ethics in Dialogue

By Julius Dihstelhoff & Agnes Schneider-Musah. On October 10, 2024, scholars from the Merian Centres for Advanced Studies (MIASA and MECAM) gathered at the Legon Campus of the University of Ghana in Accra for a roundtable on “Academic Freedom and Research Ethics: Dynamics in Ghana, Tunisia, and Germany.” As a contribution to the 2024 German Science Year theme “Freedom,” the event provided a platform for lively discussions on key issues in academic practice. The roundtable explored three primary themes, addressing the challenges and opportunities surrounding academic freedom.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Living in War: Why Ukrainian Women are Willing to Live in a Country With a Risk to their Lives

By Natalia Zaitseva-Chipak. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European countries have become home to millions of Ukrainians who have been forced to migrate because of the war. Some countries, in particular Germany, have launched unprecedented support and social protection programmes for internally displaced persons, offering housing, social benefits, language courses. Yet, a significant number of Ukrainian women choose to live in Ukraine. Some of them become internally displaced, while others live (and even return from abroad) in the frontline regions, which are constantly hit by missiles and drones.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Crises and Transnational Migration in Tunisia (2011-2024): Discourses and Practices of Hospitality and Rejection of Immigrants – 5in10 with Riadh Ben Khalifa

Riadh Ben Khalifa Riadh Ben Khalifa is an associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Tunis. His research interests focus on migration, asylum, and mobility in transitional contexts. Over the past decade, he published several books and articles in refereed journals as well as contributed to numerous chapters in collective works. He also made contributions to reports on migration and refugee issues for international organizations.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

A Map Without Guarantees: Stuart Hall and Palestinian Geographies

By Hashem Abushama. This essay was the winner of the inaugural Stuart Hall Essay Prize, a project initiated by the Stuart Hall Foundation. The award was presented at the 7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation in March 2024, also organised by the Foundation. The judges said: “We found it to be a powerful, politically important and theoretically nuanced piece of work written in lyrical prose. As a ‘theoretical diary’ that combines memoir, ethnography photography and critical analysis, it took us directly to particular places, evoking the author’s personal experience growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp, carefully historicising the layers of colonial and settler colonialisms of this space, and theorising their relationships to different modes of capitalism.”

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond

The interdisciplinary 4A_Lab Academy “Ecological Entanglements across Collections – Plant Lives and Beyond” is held from 4-8 November 2024 at different venues in Berlin. The academy explores the role of plant life in artistic and aesthetic practice, in human knowledge production and in theoretical-critical thinking across different time periods, communities and geographies. The concept note (below) provides some context to the research aims and vision of the academy.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

The Scopophilic Pleasure of the Gaze in Asfour Stah

By Najla Mosbahi. Asfour Stah (also known as Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces) is a film that explores the complexities of Tunisian society in the early 1990s. At this time, Tunisia was undergoing significant social change, grappling with the legacy of Habib Bourguiba’s progressive reforms that had improved women’s rights. However, despite these advancements, traditional gender roles remained deeply entrenched, creating a complex landscape for women. With the film, director Férid Boughedir aimed at revealing “the hidden struggles of women in a society that often silences their voices, showcasing their strength and resilience within the constraints imposed by tradition”.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Why the Past Matters: Personal Reflections on the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life

By Zahiye Kundos. For the past hundred and fifty years or so (feel free to count differently), Arabs –  whether  Muslims, Christians, or Jews – have been dealing with relative loss of control over their lives in part due to living without self-sovereignty. Such collective experience is manifest in the feeling of being lost in history, exhausted from Sisyphean efforts to connect to that past and achieve radical changes in their present, moving in a circle between glances of hope and long periods of depression. The result is a stuttering tongue, a symptom of a bruise in their heart. Generation after generation, but this heart injury doesn’t get old; the bruise continues to be blue.   

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

Fragmented Lives: 10 Pieces of the Ukrainian Displacement Puzzle

By Lidia Kuzemska. We are quickly approaching the third anniversary of forced displacement from Ukraine due to the Russian full-scale invasion – a tragic benchmark no one wanted to believe in, let alone reach. I think it is time to reflect on how the situation related to the displacement of Ukrainians abroad has evolved during this period, and what trends can be expected in the near future. With this introductory post, I invite you to a conversation about the complex and entangled puzzle of Ukrainian displacement. At the heart of it are fragmented lives of 6.7mln Ukrainians currently displaced abroad and 3.7mln inside the country. Their lives are punctuated not only by the fact of displacement per se, but also by the changing policies and attitudes of their host and home countries and societies, by strained cross-border family dynamics and blurred future aspirations.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

EU Values and the EU’s Rule of Law Action: What Place for Academic Freedom?

By Olga Ceran. Academic freedom, enshrined in Article 13 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), has not been discussed extensively in the EU legal literature. What brought it into the spotlight of EU law was the democratic backsliding in Hungary. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the so-called Lex CEU case, concerning the amendment to the Hungarian Higher Education Act, was the first judicial pronouncement on academic freedom in EU law. These developments confirm in practice what has already been pointed out in the literature: rule of law, democracy, and academic freedom are intertwined. Nevertheless, what this means for EU action remains underexplored. While the EU’s toolbox for the protection of democracy and the rule of law has grown in recent years and has been widely discussed, academic freedom is not explicitly a part thereof and there is no specific instrument for its protection.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

The Bells of Klevan′: Was the Polish-Lithuanian Rule in Rus′ a Form of Colonial Oppression?

By Tomasz Hen-Konarski. In the late eighteenth century, the small town of Klevan′ lay within the borders of the Volhynian Palatinate in Poland-Lithuania. It was a private property of the Princes Chortoryis′kyi (Czartoryski in Polish), an old Lithuanian-Ruthenian family that had become one of the most powerful houses of the Commonwealth. Spending most of their time in Warsaw or in countryside palaces, the owners of Klevan′ were absentee lords. By the 1780s, the Chortoryis′kyi were indistinguishable from other magnates of the Commonwealth: Polish- and French-speaking Latin Catholics who looked to West European capitals for cultural and intellectual inspiration. The petty burghers of Klevan, however, remained mostly Ruthenian-speaking Uniates, although Latin Catholics and Jews were also present.

TRAFO / Transregionale Studien

A Political History of the Contemporary Maghreb: From the 1950s to the Present – Conversation with Nessim Znaien

Nessim Znaien is a Junior Professor at the University of Marburg, holding the (Post)colonial Maghreb Chair since April 2022. After studying history in Lyon and Paris, he defended a doctoral thesis at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne in September 2017, entitled “Les raisins de la domination. Histoire sociale de l’alcool dans la Tunisie du Protectorat (1881-1956)”. Nessim Znaien is one of the editors of the journal l’Année du Maghreb. He conducts research on the history of material culture in the colonial and post-colonial Maghreb, in particular on the history of food and cereals. A Conversation with Diana Abbani.