Forum Transregionale Studien | Veranstaltungen

Data Stewardship

Fri, 22 May 2026 10:00:00 +0200

دعوة لجلسة استماع ونقاش حول إدارة المعرفة وملكية البيانات من قبل ذوي الضحايا والمجتمع المحلي, بناء على تجارب وخبرة واحتياجات المشاركين-ات. ما الذي من الممكن فعله في ظل بطء وتعسر عملية العدالة الانتقالية وانصاف الضحايا في سوريا؟ ما الخطوات الممكنة ضمن؟ المتاح حاليا؟ تشمل الدعوة ممثلين-ات عن روابط الضحايا و خيم الحقيقة بالإضافة إلى باحثين-ات في موضوع العنف وإدارة البيانات

انطلاقا من ادراكنا بأن العدالة الانتقالية ليست هدف قانوني وسياسي وفقط، بل هي أيضًا فعل اجتماعي, نرى أن حفظ البيانات وتحليلها هي أداة مهمة بيد المجتمع المحلي

Does the Future Last Forever? Justice and Temporalities in Turkey

Fri, 22 May 2026 17:00:00 +0200

Turkey’s long history of violence, conflict, and impunity has produced an anxious present shaped by unresolved pasts and the fragility of the rule of law. The documentary Dargeçit, which follows the trial concerning a case of enforced disappearance in the context of the Kurdish conflict, offers profound insights into the mechanisms of impunity, the persistence of demands for truth and accountability, and the ongoing struggle for justice. Throughout the film, the historically and normatively charged notion of justice is critically interrogated through the perspectives of relatives of the disappeared, lawyers, and human rights defenders.

Following the screening, Özgür Sevgi Göral, holder of the Chaire UXIL-ICM and advisor to the documentary, will give a talk entitled Violent Pasts, Radical Futures: Reckoning with the Past in Turkey. Her talk will explore the temporalities shaping both the search for justice led by the relatives of the disappeared and the enduring cycles of violence, conflict, and impunity in Turkey.

Rules Under Pressure: How Radical Right Populists Are Reshaping Europe’s Parliaments

Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Europe’s legislatures are under increasing pressure from radical right populist parties that claim to embody the unfiltered “will of the people” and challenge the legitimacy of parliamentary institutions. Historically, once in office, mainstream parties have relied on procedural mechanisms, many dating to the 19th century, that favour swift government business. This project examines whether the entry of radical right populist parties in European parliaments prompts systematic alterations to these procedures, thereby either restricting or expanding individual MPs’ rights to speak, propose legislation, and scrutinise the executive. Methodologically, the project will integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches within a comparative framework. First, it adopts the ParlRulesData method to track textual amendments in parliamentary rules of procedure over time, capturing macro-level (broad textual shifts), meso-level (specific policy areas), and micro-level (individual rule clauses) changes. Second, it draws on archival materials, semi-structured interviews with MPs and parliamentary staff, and direct observations of parliamentary sessions to clarify how radical right party entry interacts with legislative reform.

State, Citizenship, and Law in Crisis

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:00:00 +0200

What is the role and meaning of the state, citizenship, and the law (national, international, humanitarian) in times of crisis? Crisis – like catastrophy – has not only been a recurring description of and within Middle Eastern societies since the beginnings of the various renaissance movements in the region, but has also accompanied modernity in general. Today, crisis is diagnosed to be everywhere and plural. This panel discussion, moderated by Dalia Halabi, aims to open up a conversation on the challenges and prospects that contemporary societies, political communities and people of and in Europe and the Middle East are facing today.
Drawing on their respective research, Mohammed Bamyeh, Zeynep Türkyılmaz, Eli Osheroff, and Nahid Siamdoust will discuss the role of the state in generating exclusion, violence, and instability; the idea, practice and hope of citizenship and coexistence, and the situation of non-recognized people in plural societies within the legal, political and public frameworks in Middle Eastern societies.

Mohammed Bamyeh is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh (USA), and the Einstein Fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. His areas of expertise include social movements, sociology of knowledge, Islam, and anarchism. In the academic year 2020/21, he has been a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.

Eli Osheroff is a historian of the modern Middle East, with a focus on the history of Arab-Zionist relations. His first book, based on his doctoral dissertation, is forthcoming from the Van Leer Institute and deals with Arab political imagination from the late Ottoman period to 1948. The book focuses on Arab visions for an independent Palestine and the place of Jewish settlers in the future Arab state. Eli is also a regular contributor to the Forum for Regional Thinking, a think tank of Israeli Middle East scholars seeking to understand Israel’s place in the region from a critical perspective. In the academic years 2025-27, he is a Minerva Fellow at EUME.

Nahid Siamdoust is Assistant Professor of Media and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Humboldt University and Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, was the Yarshater Postdoctoral Associate in Iranian Studies at Yale University, and a Visiting Professor in Anthropology of Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Nahid is the author of Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford, 2017), co-editor of Iran Amplified: One Hundred Years of Music and Society (Harvard, 2026), and has published in academic journals such as Iranian Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Cultural Anthropology. Previously, she was an Iran correspondent for Time Magazine and a Middle East correspondent for Al Jazeera International. Her recent commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, New Lines Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, BBC, and NPR. In 2023, she launched the podcast series Woman, Life, Freedom: All in on Iran, which captured and archived important knowledge on the uprising in Iran. It now runs as a series offering interviews with authors of new books on Iran, renamed IranCast. She’s delivered a TEDx Talk titled “Dance for Life.”

Zeynep Türkyılmaz received her PhD from the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2009. After holding many fellowship and teaching positions, she is currently an associated EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Her research and teaching interests include state formation, gender, nationalism, colonialism, and religion with a focus on religious non-conformity and missionary work in the Middle East from 1800 to the present.

Dalia Halabi is a lecturer in the Department of Education at Oranim Academic College, and currently a EUME Fellow 2025/26 at the Forum Transregionale Studien. She holds a PhD in Leadership and Policy in Education from the University of Haifa. Her doctoral research examined the formation of elite identities among Palestinian students and alumni of private schools. Adopting a “study up” approach, her work interrogates social stratification, educational inequalities and class reproduction, with particular attention to elite formation among minoritized elites. She examines how marginalized communities navigate, negotiate, and reproduce elite status within unequal social structures. She previously served as the director of Dirasat – The Arab Center for Rights and Policy and has over two decades of experience in civil society and activism, with a focus on educational justice and social equity.

Please register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de. Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.

Schools and Positive Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights: What Implications for Democracy in Europe?

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Schools are crucial institutions in democracy. They are hubs of community togetherness, often the first place where children experience the power of the state, and crucial places of academic learning and socialisation vital for downstream rights and the ability to participate in democratic society. Equally, positive obligations have long been considered the “hallmark” of the European Court of Human Rights, which defines minimum obligations to comply with the ECHR, including what Council of Europe member states must do to secure respect for human rights in schools. Yet, no scholars have looked comprehensively at what positive obligations exist in relation to schooling in the member states of the Council of Europe. This is surprising as a brief survey of the case-law indicates that positive obligations actually play a significant role in defining the rights and obligations that exist vis-à-vis schools in a number of diverse areas, from keeping children safe in school to undoing histories of racial discrimination in schools to reasonably accommodating schoolchildren with disabilities. In line with this, this project seeks to typologise, conceptualise and theorise regarding the link between positive obligations and schools under the ECHR, utilising Amy Guttman’s pioneering book Democratic Education as a frame.

Indigenous Affinities: Toward Solidarity Across the Global South

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Gaza’s Children Write Back: Child-Authored Writing, War, and Political Agency

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Digital Evidence and Advocacy of Human Rights-Based Arms and Technology Treaties

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:10:00 +0200

The growing availability of digital evidence has transformed the monitoring of arms transfers and the use of emerging military technologies. From conventional weapons and surveillance tools to artificial intelligence–driven systems and lethal autonomous weapons, today’s conflicts require new approaches to documentation and advocacy. From AI-driven surveillance and predictive policing to autonomous weapons and algorithmic targeting, these technologies raise profound legal and ethical concerns. Civil society, investigative journalists, and legal practitioners increasingly turn to open-source intelligence and digital forensics to expose violations, trace weapons flows, and demand accountability. This research examines how digital methodologies—capable of geolocating attacks, verifying weapons deployment, and detecting AI-enabled targeting or surveillance—can enhance treaty enforcement, bridge evidentiary gaps, and strengthen advocacy for human rights-centered arms and technology regulation. It considers both traditional arms and emerging technologies as subjects of governance, with particular attention to their implications for international humanitarian law. Using a mixed-methods approach—combining case studies, expert interviews, and methodological review—it assesses how cross-sector collaborations can translate complex technical findings into policy change, with a focus on strengthening European Union frameworks on arms control, AI governance, and the rule of law.

Constitutional Democracy and Its Capacity for Self-Preservation in a Multipolar World: The Concept of Defensive Democracy in Germany, Ukraine, and the Broader European Experience

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0200

After the full-scale invasion, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine characterized Ukraine as a "self-defending democracy." This notion, close to militant democracy, means that despite martial law, restrictions on human rights must remain proportionate and justified to ensure the preservation of statehood. Germany was the first European country to embed the idea of a democracy capable of defending itself against anti-democratic forces. Drawing on the Basic Law of 1949, the German model rests on a commitment to democratic values, defensive capacity, and the promotion of democracy’s protection. Yet a fundamental concern follows: are these mechanisms enough? What if a party that complies with the constitution gains total control over the state? For Ukraine, the preservation of statehood should not be understood narrowly or instrumentally, and the limits of militant democracy’s toolbox must be carefully studied. As democratic states increasingly rely on national legal frameworks, Ukraine must harmonize its constitutional doctrine with the jurisprudence and constitutional principles of the European Union—while ensuring that defensive democracy does not become a threat itself. The research asks how democracies can defend themselves without undermining fundamental rights—and whether Ukraine’s constitutional framework is ready for this challenge under and after martial law.

Translate and Rule: Justice, Arabic Literature, and the Colonial Archive

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Feminist Comics in Arab and Latin American Protest Cultures

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Career Perspectives Beyond Academia: Opportunities and Challenges for International Postdocs in Berlin/Germany

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0200

A World Café jointly organized by Forum Transregionale Studien and the Berlin Research 50 initiative’s Interest Group “Third-Party Funding and Career Advice”.

Over the past few years, we have observed within our institutions that international postdoctoral Fellows who wish to stay in Berlin after their Fellowships increasingly pursue careers outside academia. Beyond individual motivations, this tendency is linked to the limited availability and accessibility of academic positions in Germany, particularly for those who do not hold a degree from a German university. Assuming that many international postdocs in Berlin are dealing with similar questions about their professional future, this event invites those interested in exploring career opportunities beyond academia.
In the interactive format of a “World Café”, invited speakers who have transitioned out of academia will share their experiences at four thematic discussion tables, offering personal insights into career paths in journalism, cultural work, education, and policy-related work in NGOs and Think Tanks in Berlin. Alongside addressing the opportunities, challenges, and obstacles encountered on their career paths, the speakers will reflect on how academic skills can be applied in non-academic contexts and how to get access to the structural knowledge and networks necessary for entering alternative professional fields. There will be time for discussion, exchange and networking throughout the event.

Program (tentative):

10:00-10:15 | Welcome and introduction

10:15-10:45 | Impulse talk by Anne Schreiter (GSO – Guidance, Skills and Opportunties for Researchers e.V., Berlin)

10:45-11:45 | World Café with four thematic tables

11:45-12:00 | Wrap-up discussion

12:00-13:00 | Light lunch

We kindly ask for prior registration until 15 June 2026 via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de.

Bi-Nationalism and the Future of Israel

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Narratives of Female Criminality in Turkish Literature and the Press: A Comparative Analysis (1870-1935)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Queer Temporalities and Cultural Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This workshop addresses questions of time and temporality in Central and Eastern European literatures from queer perspectives, with a focus on Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russia. Organized within the framework of EUTIM project, it explores how questions of time, sexuality, and literary form intersect across different historical moments and cultural settings.

Over the past decades, queer temporality—developed and articulated in literary and cultural theory by scholars such as Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam, Lee Edelman, and José Esteban Muñoz—has provided a way to describe and analyze literary conceptualizations of time in relation to queer experience, desire, and intimacy. Rather than treating time as linear or developmental, this scholarship has emphasized temporal phenomena such as delay, belatedness, interruption, repetition, and alternative temporal horizons. While approaches to queer temporality differ in their political implications and theoretical commitments, they share a concern with how dominant temporal regimes structure belonging, futurity, inclusion, and exclusion.

In the literary contexts of Central and Eastern Europe of the 20th and 21st centuries, questions of queer time intersect with particular historical conditions, including censorship, displacement, the fragmentation and uneven transmission of literary heritage, and shifting regimes of visibility, as well as with culturally specific ways of articulating same-sex desire. Against this background, the workshop brings together work on different literary traditions and languages to explore how literary texts engage with temporal structures through representations of sexuality, attachment, and non-aligned life trajectories shaped by political rupture, social transformation, and migration.

The workshop foregrounds literary analysis of a wide range of textual materials, including poetry, prose, drama, essays, diaries, correspondence, and other forms of life writing, in which temporal experience becomes narratively legible. Special attention is given to problems of archival absence, fragmentary textual survival, and locally situated narrative practices, understood not only as methodological challenges but also as constitutive elements of queer temporal experience.

Alongside research on lesser-known or understudied authors and corpora, the workshop also invites renewed engagement with more established figures commonly associated with queer literary history. In such cases, the emphasis lies on re-examining their temporal configurations and literary forms, rather than on reaffirming their canonical status.

The workshop will result in an edited volume featuring contributions from participants.

- more information follows -

Global Hijra: A Modern History of Muslim Refugee Migration

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Something is Passing in the Night: Iranian Hyphenates in the World

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.