What are current issues, ideas, themes or concerns that merrit transregional debate and exchange, and why? Issues offers an opportunity to introduce, report, explain and contextualize academic events, new and ongoing projects. For more information see Contributions.
maia tabet and Yasmeen Hanoosh are Arabic-English literary translators who have spent decades living and translating from multiple diasporic locales. In this conversation, they retrace the trajectories of their experience as translators, uprooted Arab women, and bilingual diasporic subjects to identify intersections and divergences along their paths.
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.”
By Zahiye Kundos. This reflective piece explores the complex, intergenerational sense of loss and identity crisis within Arab communities, focusing on the author’s personal journey of reconnecting with heritage, language, and selfhood amid a history marked by exile, fragmentation, and political marginalization. The author describes a profound attachment to belonging (intimāʾ), which shapes her writing and drives her to understand and heal the collective “bruise” in the Arab heart—a metaphor for enduring pain and resilience in the face of historical displacement. Zahiye Kundos navigates familial and cultural ties across generations, examining both male and female influences in her family and the broader Arab intellectual landscape.
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.
By Mohamed Ismail Sabry. In the post-2011 Revolution years, ideological polarisation and political instability weakened the Tunisian state, freeing much space for business tycoons to largely dominate the political realm. Such “state capture” had a deep impact on the enactment and/or implementation of various policies that would significantly affect inclusive and sustainable growth. After 2011, tycoons benefitted from the lax and discretionary implementation of policies.
By Fatemeh Shams. In this article, the author reflects on seemingly disconnected events, such as “the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban” (2021), the rise of the “Women Life Freedom” Movement in Iran (2022) and the ongoing war in Gaza, under the lens of transnational feminist solidarity.
By Julius Dihstelhoff, Rachid Ouaissa, and Thomas Richter. The Maghreb has been shaped and influenced by external powers and forces throughout most phases of its recent history. As a vibrant space in motion, this world region is only at the beginning of a long process of carving out its own future autonomous role. Historically, the Maghreb has faced internal tensions due to acute disparities and complex external interlinkages with surrounding regions. These tensions are crucial for understanding contemporary transformation processes and future dynamics.
By Zahiye Kundos. “Now, as a group of people who are obsessed with the idea that history matters, we can agree that in the last few months, the aforementioned big hopes have been receiving a series of electric shocks. Thereafter, the word ‘return’ and the question mark disappeared, leaving ‘exile’ standing alone, naked on an empty stage. By then, and while becoming perplexed about the title’s orientation and the exact concepts to tackle, our hosts first suggested talking about “Rethinking Jewish Politics: Between Exile and Sovereignty” and then changed it to “Between State and Exile: Rethinking Jewish Politics.”
By Dr Ruji Auethavornpipat. The European Commission’s Rule of Law Report, while assessing EU member states’ adherence to key rule of law principles, significantly lacks a focused evaluation of fundamental rights protections, especially for migrants. This oversight not only undermines the report’s comprehensive integrity but also reflects poorly on the EU’s commitment to its core democratic values.
By Sebastián Eduardo Dávila. After experiencing the Alasitas Celebration in Puno, Peru, the author puts forward five theses on syncretism, or the amalgamation of different religions and cultures in the Andean region. By advancing an understanding of syncretism not as fusion, but as layering of experience through centuries marked by colonisation, diaspora, and resistance across the hemisphere, the author attempts to redraft the concept of syncretism.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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