Author: Forum Transregionale Studien
By Fatemeh Shams. When the first U.S.-Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran on February 28, 2026, it wasn’t just the noise and destruction that shocked Iranian citizens. The nationwide digital blackout imposed by the government and the darkness that followed exacerbated the fear of millions of Iranians, who were cut off from any communication with the outside world. Almost overnight, Iran was thrown into a near-total digital silence. News of the outbreak of war arrived only in pieces, if at all. This was deliberate and tactical: the blackout cut off families and isolated communities, turning simple facts into rumors and confusion.
Imene Gannouni khemiri is a short-term Fellow at Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) for the 2025 cohort and an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities, University of Manouba, Tunisia. She holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Manouba with her doctoral research focusing on the representation of Tunis in British travel writing (1815–1910). Her research interests include travel writing, migration studies, media studies, and visual culture.
By Harald Kümmerle. To say that Carl Schmitt is a controversial figure would be an understatement. Called the “crown jurist of the Third Reich” for his proactive engagement with Nazi politics, he remains a key point of reference for the New Right. His influence, however, reaches far beyond this milieu. This article argues that while Mignolo’s alignment with Russia cannot be solely attributed to his appropriation of Schmitt, his ultimate stance reveals deeper contradictions inherent in Schmitt’s work itself.
By Natalia Zaitseva. The motives of Ukrainian women for mobility and immobility, recorded several years after forced displacement, cannot be considered indicators of the causal mechanisms of decision-making. They are rather the result of a secondary reflection on experience, adapted to new life circumstances and existing structural constraints. Therefore, at the current stage of the war, it is more productive to focus on investigating how forcibly displaced persons interpret and experience their countries of residence. It is these perceptions that allow for a deeper under- standing of the dynamics of (im)mobility in the context of a protracted war.
By Izadora Xavier do Monte. This contribution looks at Brazilian security dynamics to understand how gender intersects with Brazilian perceptions of peace, war, security, and militarization. Women in Brazil have insisted that militarization deeply shapes their everyday interactions, their living together with others, affecting how they carry out their roles and live their lives as women. It’s not just a question of police violence; it’s about armed men everywhere – whether police, hired gunmen for landowners, or others. This widespread militarization is failing to makewomen feel safe, and gender is vital to understand what makes for that dynamic.
By Nahid Siamdoust. These days in Iran people are marking the 40th day after the passing of the thousands who were killed in the January 2026 protests, an Islamic tradition that symbolizes the closure of the mourning period. Reports and videos from the country show hundreds of people gathered, clapping in honor of the dead and singing the national anthem, in unconventional ceremonies that are more akin to political events than personal commemorations. In rejecting long entrenched traditions of collective mourning, these Iranians are enacting a new articulation of national identity, one that refuses to trade in the same language of the Islamic Republic.
By Najati Sidqi, Introduction by Margaret Litvin. In the opening chapter of his posthumously published memoir, the activist and intellectual Najati Sidqi (1905–1979) reminisces about the cultural heterogeneity of his birthplace Jerusalem. In 1924, he became one of its first Arab members of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP). The PCP rejected both British imperial rule and Zionism, which they considered “a bourgeois movement that benefited only wealthy Jews. They insisted that their party, which “was for all inhabitants of Palestine,” could “reconcile the interests of the working classes” of Jews and Arabs alike.
By Natália Bueno, Roberta Holanda Maschietto, and Sarah Njeri. This entry questions the foundations of knowledge production in Peace and Conflict Studies by advocating an incremental movement that adopts a bottom-up and inside-out approach. Specifically, we argue that, with support, early-career researchers (ECRs) from the Global South can be pollinators, spreading new knowledge production methods across ECR groups globally and scaling up to engage mid- and senior-level researchers. This is essential for the progression of better, more inclusive knowledge production worldwide.
By Andreas Wüst. The exodus of thousands of Jewish families from Morocco and the lamentable situation of Jewish heritage in the country, the result of years of omission and disinterest, are now followed by a strategy to preserve and renovate Jewish memory. André Azoulay, the king’s advisor and himself a Moroccan Jew, promotes the kingdom’s narrative about a diverse, tolerant and moderate society. While the public promotion of Jewish heritage before 2016 was part of a general strategy to improve Morocco’s image on the international level, it has now become pivotal to Moroccan foreign policy concerning the territory of Western Sahara.
Meret Plucis completed her legal education at Humboldt University Berlin, Panthéon- Assas University in Paris (LLM), and the University of Amsterdam (LLM). Early on during her studies, she developed a focus on European Union law. With her re:constitution fellowship, Meret Plucis returns to a more applied angle: examining how gender equality is strategically reinterpreted in retirement and labor law, connecting constitutional theory with on-the-ground legal realities. Her professional and personal interests are centered around feminist issues.