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Category: Series

A woman wearing a mask is holding a baby.

Care, Inequalities, and Conviviality. The Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Berlin, Buenos Aires and Mexico City

By Raquel Rojas et al. Care seemed to have become one of the most urgent issues of our time amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This empirical analysis focuses on the cases of Argentina, Mexico, and Germany, based on original surveys conducted in the largest city of each country: Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Berlin. The analysis shows that different models of care provision translated into heterogeneous levels of support for the population during the crisis. Unequal access to care services determined, to a large extent, the unequal impact of the pandemic and its containment measures on specific social groups.

A statue in front of a building.

Precolonial Memory, Postcolonial Critique: Ibn Khaldun in Tunisian Arabic Fiction of the 21st Century

By Hanan Natour. As part of this publication series on the decolonial Mediterranean, focusing on Tunisian literature serves as a gateway to creative engagements with the country’s significant geography. Tunisian literature links to the region in several directions — it is part of North African literature and modern Arabic literature. Grounded in the violent experience of colonialism, it also finds multiple ways of engaging with French literature from the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Street art of two birds with text reading "Stop war in Ukraine".

“Russia is Unequivocally a ‘Cannibal Country’”: How Ukrainian Officials Talk About the ‘Russian World’

By Liudmyla Pidkuimukha. What is the ‘Russian World’ – russkij mir – and how is it understood today from a Ukrainian perspective? Officially, this doctrine is built on a mix of shared language, culture, Orthodox Christianity, historical memory, and reverence for the so-called ‘Great Patriotic War’, often framed as the Soviet Union’s greatest victory. In Ukraine, this ideology has taken on a very different meaning in the shadow of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war. Ukrainian officials draw on powerful imagery to make sense of violence, occupation, and loss – and to challenge the narratives coming from Moscow.

A group of women protesting.

The Juridification of Care and the Navigation of Sentiment in Post-Dictatorship Tunisia

By Ola Galal. As care became a legal category in Tunisia through Law 58, it opened up as well as foreclosed possibilities for political action and moral personhood, and reconstituted self, community, and labor amid great uncertainty during the transition to democracy. Yet this victim-centered approach also displaces the burden of care, support, and “empowerment” on a gendered labor force in the absence of the requisite legal mechanisms that enable the application of the henceforth abstract and broad clause of law about care and protection.

Drawing of Putin.

Dismantling Matter: Ukraine’s Attempts to Decolonize its Culture

By Nadiia Honcharenko. In Ukraine, there has been a strong public demand that certain elements of heritage should be removed from public space, as they contain distinct symbols of colonial and totalitarian domination and therefore aggravate the sense of trauma that Ukrainians are currently experiencing, as well as increase the pain of grief and loss caused by Russian aggression. This demand can be seen as both, reason and result of Ukraine’s struggle to reject the false and deeply violent so-called ‘brotherhood’ between Ukrainian and Russian society. Two main trends are evident: The desire of Ukrainians to free themselves from Russian shackles on one side and the attempts of the Russian political regime to slow this desire down, or even prevent it, on the other side.

Displaced from the Future: Crossing the Sea Back to Syria in Nesrine Khoury’s Speculative Novel Wadi Qandil

By Annamaria Bianco. In the late 1990s, the establishment of the border-free Schengen Area within the newly formed European Union was counterbalanced by sudden restrictions on the granting of visas to citizens of third countries. The novel Wadi Qandil (Wādī Qandīl), published in 2023 by the Spain-based writer and poet Nesrine Khoury, falls into the subcategory of “refugee futurism”. It contributes to the rewriting of the contemporary Mediterranean imaginary, proposing a heterotopic vision of this dual space at the time of the so-called migratory crisis.

Two men fighting, wearing jiu-jitsu gear.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as a Marker of Whiteness and Anti-Blackness. Embodying Inclusive Conservative Conviviality in Rio de Janeiro

By Raphael Schapira. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) practitioners often perceive their sport as a discrimination-free space, stating: “On the mats, everyone is equal”. However, this belief in equality can sometimes obscure the fact that BJJ has been predominantly associated with Whiteness. This paper explores how the Gracie and Fadda lineages – crucial for the sport’s development – have distinctively constructed BJJ as a White sport, each for their own purposes. Schapira argues that Whiteness and anti-Blackness are constitutive elements linking the appeal of Bolsonaro and neoconservativism with communities typically expected to instead support other political forces more interested in progressive socio-political change.

Witnesses, Participants and Creators: the Two-Day Workshop “Ukrainian Scholars and Artists at War”

By Olena Sobolieva. In May 2025, the two-day workshop “Ukrainian Scholars and Artists at War” was held at Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. The event was organized in partnership with several organizations: the Forum Transregionale Studien, the Interdisciplinary Research Network “Prisma Ukraїna – Eastern Europe Research Network”, the academic website “Ukraine Moderna”, the NGO “The Center for Applied Anthropology”, and the European University Institute. By organizing such an event, Lidia Kuzemska, Oksana Ovsiiuk, and Iulia Lashchuk created a platform for Ukrainian scholars and artists to engage with how Russia’s full-scale invasion has impacted their professional, ethical, and existential horizons.

An Exploration of Global German History

By José Guzmán. The emergence of a Global German History in the last 20 years calls for examination to see the development of new avenues in the field of Global History. The connections and new perspectives that have flourished inside the discipline are posing innovative challenges that move this school of thought forward. What topics and new approaches does a Global History of Germany bring to the table? Which are the recurring topics in the minds of historians of Global German History?

Traumatised Decolonial Transit: Constructing Historical Narrative in Ukrainian Culture in the Early ХХІ Century

By Tamara Hundorova. The Orange Maidan was a form of consolidation of the national community and had distinct signs of anti-colonial protest, but it ended in significant disappointment. The period between the two Maidans, or the two Ukrainian revolutions of the early twenty-first century, revealed past traumas and recorded different models of historical memory, primarily national–Eurocentric and nostalgic–Soviet–centric. The time has come to build historiographical narratives out of fragments, films, and paintings, out of the remnants of the memory erased by the era of colonialism and totalitarianism.