Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Author: Forum Transregionale Studien

Group of people sitting on patterned cushions and rugs in a room watching a black-and-white video projected on a wall.

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.

A historic newspaper in Korean.

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.

Two people seated on stage in front of an audience during a book launch event with a projected slide showing the book cover.

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).

A crowd of people at a street protest holding rainbow flags and signs.

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.

A grafitti of a group of protesters holding signs and flags.

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.

A woman in a black longsleeve with long brown hair.

The Life of an Academic Does Not Have to be Confined to Sitting Behind a Desk ‒ 5in10 with Jacquelyn Veraldi

Jacquelyn Veraldi is a Junior Research Fellow at the Central European University Democracy Institute (Budapest). Her research interests include EU constitutional, in particular the values of democracy and the rule of law. She is also a Scholar at The Good Lobby. Jacquelyn holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College).

A group of people sitting in a conference room, listening to a presentation.

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?

A Renaissance painting of hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

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

By Aya Labanieh. During the pandemic, the landscape of the Anglophone Internet, 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.

A man with a grey beard wearing a blue suit.

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.

A person wearing blue gloves is holding a poster with Arabic text and an image of wheat.

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.