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Author: Forum Transregionale Studien

What We Are Trying to Return Is Stories’

Alia Mossallam and Britta Lange in Conversation with Olga Schubert Olga Schubert (OS): Thank you so much for being here today. You have both 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,…

When Gender Identity Becomes State Certification

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research 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,[1] the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, received…

Systems of Conflictivity

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Andréa Gill This article is a repost from Rewriting Peace and Conflict, where this text was originally published. Beyond the state-centric categories of war/peace, the ongoing genocide against Indigenous and African-descendent populations on the continent which Lélia Gonzalez renamed ‘Améfrica Ladina’ – recognised…

The Life of an Academic Does Not Have to be Confined to Sitting Behind a Desk ‒ 5in10 with Jacquelyn Veraldi

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research Jacquelyn Veraldi is a Junior Research Fellow at the Central European University Democracy Institute (Budapest). Her research interests include EU constitutional, in particular the values of democracy and the rule of law. She is also a Scholar at The Good Lobby. Jacquelyn holds a…

Are Migrants’ Rights (still) Human Rights? Protection & Exclusion amid the Crisis of Liberalism in the Americas

By Farid Dabour An international group of scholars researching Latin American migration politics convened on February 12–13, 2026 at the Latin American Institute (LAI-FU), with participants from UNLA (Argentina), Freie Universität Berlin, UNU-CRIS, TU Berlin, Bielefeld University, the University of Bristol, Durham University, Leuphana University Lüneburg, CONICET, SOAS, Stiftung Wissenschaft…

Cynical Uses of Suffering: Gaza, Antisemitism, & the New Digital Right

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Aya Labanieh By the estimation of most academics, journalists, and medical experts, the Covid-19 pandemic was a mass radicalization event—one that unfolded almost entirely on the Internet.1 As a global crisis in public health, the pandemic brought with it an equally global surge…

Choice Illusions: Through ‘Rule by Law’ to ‘Electoral Capture’ in Hungary and Poland?

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Stefan Szwed This article is a shortened version of the eponymous re:constitution Working Paper, which was originally published the Forum Transregionale Studien in 2025 and can be read here. Introduction National populists across Europe, especially the likes of Hungary’s Victor Orbán and Poland’s…

Food is Where all my Interests Meet – 5in10 with Omri Polatsek

Omri Polatsek is a historian of science, technology, and the environment, with a regional focus on Egypt and the Middle East. He is a doctoral student at the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities” at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and a researcher at the “History of…

Bumantara and a World Federation. Revisiting Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana’s Ideas on a Culture of Inclusion in Times of Crisis

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Fathun Karib In September 2024, the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) held a workshop titled “De-centering Academia: Inter-Asian Perspectives” in Tokyo, Japan. This workshop addressed two key processes of de-centering that occur in today’s academic landscape. First, new educational institutions in Asia…

Constitutional Adjudication: Beyond Reductionist Reading of Democracy

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Raunaq Jaiswal and Max Steuer In February 2024, the Supreme Court of India unanimously struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme—a mechanism through which corporations could make anonymous donations to political parties—holding that anonymous donations to political parties violated the right to information. The…

Mobility is also humility ‒ 5in10 with Yann Lorans

Yann Lorans studied European Union law at the Universities of Montpellier, Lund, Paris-Est Créteil, and at the College of Europe (Bruges). After an internship at the Court of Justice of the European Union in the cabinet of Advocate General Michal Bobek, he began a joint PhD at Université Paris-Est and…

An Anguished Debate Among Iranians

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Nahid Siamdoust This article is a repost from New Lines Magazine, where this text was originally published. There’s a particular kind of vertigo that comes with receiving messages that you desperately seek as signs of life but whose content you dread. A week…

Epistemic Siege: Digital Blackout and the Fight for Meaning in Iran

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research 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…

Carl Schmitt’s Afterlife in Decolonial Theory: Rereading Walter Mignolo

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Harald Kümmerle Living with Schmitt’s Ghost 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…

Cognitive Dissonance in Stay-Leave Decisions of Ukrainian Forced Migrants

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Natalia Zaitseva The findings outlined in this text came as a surprise to me as a researcher. Since the beginning of the Russian war on Ukraine, I have been researching the motives for mobility/immobility among Ukrainian women during wartime. However, in the course…

Militarization as Conviviality: How Women Define and Resist Gendered Everyday Violence and Discipline in Brazil

TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Izadora Xavier do Monte This article is a shortened version of the eponymous MECILA Working Paper, which was originally published by the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America in 2025 and can be read here. “Do you think reparation for what…