12
Apr
2021
Philippe Sands
To mark the publication of the German language version of The Ratline, which follows his prize-winning book East West Street, Philippe Sands explores the ideas that underpin his new work, an account of the lives of Otto Wächter, an Austrian SS Gruppenführer indicted for mass murder, his wife Charlotte, from the moment they met Vienna …
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22
Mar
2021
Noémi Kiss
In recent months, culture and the arts have suffered severely under pandemic-related restrictions. While artists, freelancers, independent projects, and even publicly funded cultural institutions are struggling for economic survival, we easily overlook the fact that—also in “normal times”—the autonomy of culture is increasingly being called into question. With respect to the immediate effects of this …
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17
Mar
2021
Faranak Miraftab
This presentation draws on my co-authored paper with Efad Huq to relationally theorize realities of those living in informal settlements and in camps in the era of intensified global displacements. We organize this relational analytical conversation around three themes: experiential to highlight the precarious relationship of the two groups to citizenship and place, what we …
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14
Mar
2021
Rudolf Anschober, Marcus Bachmann, Katharina T. Paul, Barbara Prainsack, Ursula Wiedermann-Schmidt, Shalini Randeria
„Niemand ist sicher, bevor wir alle sicher sind“, warnen internationale Organisationen vor dem allerorts aufgekommenen Impfnationalismus. Denn mit den nun verfügbaren Covid-Impfstoffen stellen sich neue drängende Fragen: Wer bestimmt, welche Länder und Bevölkerungsgruppen überhaupt Zugang zu einem Impfstoff erhalten? Brauchen wir eine globale Impfstrategie, um den Wettlauf gegen die Ausbreitung von Mutationen zu gewinnen? Welche Lehren können wir aus früheren Pandemien und der Geschichte von Impfungen ziehen?
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01
Mar
2021
Jan Vana
Social scientists often refer to literary fiction as a source of inspiration, social understanding, and deep insights into the “Zeitgeist” or “episteme”. In passing, they often subsume literature into conceptual frameworks, approaching it as “fictional” data to be translated or converted into “factual” scholarly discourse. This presentation will try to develop an epistemological-theoretical model which …
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23
Feb
2021
Felix Ackermann
Noise can be understood as sonic violence and analysed as a central means of communication during the recurring prison riots in the early 20th-century Habsburg Empire. For both prison administrators and state-appointed public prosecutors, silence was synonymous with discipline and order. This definition gave criminal prisoners an opportunity to bargain silence in exchange for legally …
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18
Feb
2021
Masha Gessen, Shalini Randeria, Sławomir Sierakowski, Johannes Völz
Since the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, there no longer can be any doubt that liberal democracy is under attack. For at least a decade, one liberal-democratic state after another has begun to face pushback – and in many cases take-over – by illiberal populists committed to authoritarian rule. The specter …
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08
Feb
2021
Kateřina Kočí
Sacrifice may be a topic of intense philosophical-theological academic debate, but it is also the everyday experience of millions of ordinary people. Scholarly reflection on sacrifice has produced an ambiguous discourse which stretches across numerous disciplines from anthropology, to religious and social studies, to ethics. Sacrifice has of course developed within the religious-cultic context and …
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28
Jan
2021
Shalini Randeria
University of Leeds, 21/22 and 28/29 January, 2021, 4pm (GMT) An open-to-the-public online lecture series co-hosted by the Bauman Institute and the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (University of Leeds), together with the Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics Network (PIN) One of the most prominent and influential intellectuals of our times, Zygmunt Bauman …
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26
Jan
2021
Sergei Medvedev
In the past decade, memory politics has become greatly contested. Russia under Putin launched a major propaganda offensive ahead of the 75th anniversary of victory in World War II (8 May in the rest of the world, 9 May in Russia), aiming to fight the “falsifications” of war history by the West, and to deny …
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20
Jan
2021
Prem Kumar Rajaram
Refugees and migrants are often studied as though they have no relation to the racial and class structures and histories of the societies in which they reside. They are taken to be external strangers to be governed by ‘integration’ policy and border management. I begin from the suggestion that migration, and in particular forced migration, …
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