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5in10 / re:constitution

Constitutional Law is Ultimately About People’s Lived Experiences – 5in10 with Dukagjin Abdyli

Dukagjin Abdyli is a distinguished legal expert specializing in European Law, Constitutional Law, and International Law. He holds a Doctor of Legal Sciences degree from Karl Franzens University of Graz, where his research focused on the interaction between European and international legal frameworks. Dukagjin has held key positions in Kosovo’s public institutions, with a particular focus on constitutional and European integration processes. During his tenure at the Ministry of European Integration, he played a crucial role in the legal approximation process, ensuring the harmonization of Kosovo’s legislation with the EU acquis.

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Reviews

Soviet Paradoxes: A Day of Investigation

By Veronica Marcinschi. Communism promised to resolve the dilemma of reconciling the core modern value of equality with cultural and sociological diversity, yet was in a sense dissolved by it. What can the communist experience teach us about the nature and historical evolution of political modernity, and about the fundamental dilemmas of modern society? The conference “National Internationalism? Nation, Race, and Class in the Soviet Sphere” at Bard College Berlin discussed such questions.

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re:constitution / Rule of Law Reflections

Data protection weaponised

By Tivadar Hüttl. This article explores the intricate relationship between data protection regulations and press freedom in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the misuse of data protection laws to initiate Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). The Hungarian Forbes demonstrates the onerous legal obligations placed on the press and the potential for Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) to function as de facto instruments of SLAPPs.

A group of people in front of a bridge built out of stone.

Conversations / MECAM

Dancing Across Time and Space: Mysticism, the City, and the Body in Tunisia

Souad Matoussi in conversation with Julius Dihstelhoff. Mystical dances in Tunisia are not relics of a distant past. They are living practices that continue to shape urban life today. Moving from sacred zawiyas to private homes and public stages, they connect bodies, memories, and the city across time. This interview with Souad Matoussi shows how these practices function as cultural resources, sites of negotiation, and forms of collective imagination. Mysticism is not outside modern urban life. It is one of the ways cities are continuously produced and reimagined.

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5in10 / EUME

Writing Poetry and Writing Criticism are not at all Distinct Categories of Creation ‒ 5in10 with Ammar Kandeel

Ammar Kandeel is a literary and art critic whose work lies at the intersection of visual culture, decolonial studies, and literary/art theory. His main research area spans issues of Palestinian transnational creations and self-representations. He earned his PhD from the University of Montpellier 3 with a dissertation analyzing Edward Said’s writing of the critical discourse on orientalism. Recipient of postdoctoral mobilities (funded by the FMSH, ACSS, UNIMED, and Columbia Global Centers – Amman), Ammar’s research focuses on Palestinian testimonial strategies and agency across various mediums. In the academic year 2025/26, he is a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.

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Conversations

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.

De-Centering Academia: InterAsian Perspectives

Beyond Binaries: Decentring Foreign Knowledge in 20th Century Korea

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.

Conversations / EUTIM

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).

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Issues

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.

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Areas and Disciplines / Issues

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.