TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Nataly Castillo BennettThis 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 2020 and can be read here. Abstract Global practices shaped by colonization and modernity…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Mina Khanlarzadeh On August 20th 2026, The Guardian published an open letter addressed to political prisoners in Iran, penned by academic scholars in solidarity. Since then, it has faced various criticisms and sparked wider debates. Joining the debate is former EUME Fellow Mina…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Souhir Zekri In November 2025, at the beginning of my fellowship, I conducted an interview in Mahdia with the sisters Habiba and Basma, who both work as mashtat. What began as an interview soon became a lively and informal gathering between women, touching…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Nora Lafi Introduction In 1965, Mohamed Chérif Sahli (1906–1989) published the seminal book Décoloniser l’histoire (Sahli, 1965). A longtime activist of the Algerian national movement, Sahli, a historian, journalist, diplomat and philosopher, became the director of the Algerian national archives when the country…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Maria Grynevych One of the women I interviewed – a stand-up performer who left Odesa for Berlin – described the German reception system with real admiration and then, in the same breath, declined it: “the financial support, of course, how the social system…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Ahmed Hussein Abdelrahman Adam This article was first published here on the 18th of June, 2026. On April 11, 2019, the then President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan was ousted in a revolution. In September 2019, the Transitional Sovereignty Council was established. Tensions in…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Imene Gannouni Khemiri Introduction[1] The escalating ‘irregular’[2] migration across the Mediterranean Sea has become a major topic of international interest. While it is not a new phenomenon, the number of ‘sub-Saharan’ migrants,[3] along with the associated death toll, has recently reached unprecedented levels. In 2023, reports estimated 212,100 attempts by…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Julia von Sigsfeld 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. 1. Introduction Confronting a history of dispossession…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Lidia Kuzemska This text is an excerpt from the introduction to the volume “Fragmented Lives in Times of War: Displacement Within and From Ukraine”, recently published in the series “Forum Transregionale Studien – Dossiers” at transcript Verlag and edited by Lidia Kuzemska. The…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Nada El-Kouny in conversation with Hadeel Assali In 1969, Golda Meir’s government drew up a secret plan to move up to 60,000 Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and resettle them in Alfredo Stroessner’s Paraguay. Only a handful made the journey before the scheme was exposed. One of them was…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Revital Madar Introduction It was almost midnight when Lea Schiff heard noises outside the caravan where she was spending the night with her husband, Arie. Already asleep, she woke him up. He grabbed the gun he kept under his pillow and went outside.…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Mina Khanlazardeh هوا بس ناجوانمردانه سرد است The weather is painfully cold. ‒Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, “Zemestān” I learned about the 1953 U.S.-British coup in elementary school. My father taught me chess openings every night while listening to music in the background. Every once in…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Daniel Behar In the early 2010s, translations of Ghayath al-Madhoun’s poetry into Swedish and Dutch quietly did what we now call going viral: they circulated through European literary networks with a velocity and reach that no Arabic-language edition could have achieved on its own, and they laid the foundations…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Matteo Bonelli This article is a shortened version of the eponymous re:constitution Working Paper, which was originally published the Forum Transregionale Studien in 2024 and can be read here. Introduction The “constitutional backsliding” crisis in the European Union (EU) started almost fifteen years ago.[1] Since then, EU institutions have…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Hanan Natour is a German-Palestinian scholar of Arabic and Comparative Literature and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London, where she contributes to the UKRI-funded project “Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspectives Of and Through Al-Andalus”. Hanan obtained her PhD in Arabic and Literary Studies with a thesis on modern…
Forum Transregionale Studien · TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research By Miriam Hanses Mysticism and Sufism are often portrayed as historical and spiritual traditions detached from present-day realities. The MECAM Traveling Academy “Mysticism and the City: Temporality, Spatiality, Culture, and Society”, held in Gabès, Tunisia, challenged this perspective by addressing present-day dynamics. The question…
