Forum Transregionale Studien | Veranstaltungen

Digital Evidence and Advocacy of Human Rights-Based Arms and Technology Treaties

Wed, 20 May 2026 14:00:00 +0200

The growing availability of digital evidence has transformed the monitoring of arms transfers and the use of emerging military technologies. From conventional weapons and surveillance tools to artificial intelligence–driven systems and lethal autonomous weapons, today’s conflicts require new approaches to documentation and advocacy. From AI-driven surveillance and predictive policing to autonomous weapons and algorithmic targeting, these technologies raise profound legal and ethical concerns. Civil society, investigative journalists, and legal practitioners increasingly turn to open-source intelligence and digital forensics to expose violations, trace weapons flows, and demand accountability. This research examines how digital methodologies—capable of geolocating attacks, verifying weapons deployment, and detecting AI-enabled targeting or surveillance—can enhance treaty enforcement, bridge evidentiary gaps, and strengthen advocacy for human rights-centered arms and technology regulation. It considers both traditional arms and emerging technologies as subjects of governance, with particular attention to their implications for international humanitarian law. Using a mixed-methods approach—combining case studies, expert interviews, and methodological review—it assesses how cross-sector collaborations can translate complex technical findings into policy change, with a focus on strengthening European Union frameworks on arms control, AI governance, and the rule of law.

Colonial Subjects to Surveilled Citizens: Depictions of the Regime Informant in the Cultural Memory of Baathist Syria and Iraq

Wed, 20 May 2026 17:00:00 +0200

This talk will present Labanieh’s overall book project on colonial conspiracies and their afterlives in 20th century Middle Eastern literature and media, as well as new research for her fourth and final chapter on depictions of the regime's secret services informant (al-mukhber) in the cultural memory of Baathist Syria and Iraq (70s-90s). The chapter examines plays, novels, poems, and political tracts that were produced by dissident cultural figures such as Mohammad al-Maghout, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Saadallah Wannous, and Nazik al-Malaika, and that address—directly or obliquely—the taboo yet ambient figure of the mukhabarat informant. What role does the informant play in the cultural imaginary of this time? What does he show us about the political transition from subjects of colonial power to citizens of the security state? The chapter builds on existing scholarship on “mukhabarat culture” in Baathist Syria, while considering what insights can be gained from a comparative approach across the region’s security regimes. It likewise explores how state surveillance reshapes society, and the role of theatricality in cultural production under dictatorship.

Aya Labanieh is a scholar of empire, conspiracy theory, media, and memory culture. She received her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, with a dissertation entitled One Thousand and One Nightmares: Colonial Conspiracies and Their Afterlives in Modern Middle Eastern Literature and Media (2025). She is presently a research fellow at EUME and SYRASP at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, and this August she will be starting a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in Qatar. She has published in, among others, Poetics Today, Journal of Arabic Literature, Journal of Medical Humanities, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing, alongside public-facing venues such as Aeon and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Eli Osheroff is a historian of the modern Middle East, with a focus on the history of Arab-Zionist relations. His first book, based on his doctoral dissertation, is forthcoming from the Van Leer Institute and deals with Arab political imagination from the late Ottoman period to 1948. The book focuses on Arab visions for an independent Palestine and the place of Jewish settlers in the future Arab state. Eli is also a regular contributor to the Forum for Regional Thinking, a think tank of Israeli Middle East scholars seeking to understand Israel’s place in the region from a critical perspective. In the academic years 2025-27, he is a Minerva Fellow at EUME.

Please register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de. Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.

Does the Future Last Forever? Justice and Temporalities in Turkey

Fri, 22 May 2026 17:00:00 +0200

Turkey’s long history of violence, conflict, and impunity has produced an anxious present shaped by unresolved pasts and the fragility of the rule of law. The documentary Dargeçit, which follows the trial concerning a case of enforced disappearance in the context of the Kurdish conflict, offers profound insights into the mechanisms of impunity, the persistence of demands for truth and accountability, and the ongoing struggle for justice. Throughout the film, the historically and normatively charged notion of justice is critically interrogated through the perspectives of relatives of the disappeared, lawyers, and human rights defenders.

Following the screening, Özgür Sevgi Göral, holder of the Chaire UXIL-ICM and advisor to the documentary, will give a talk entitled Violent Pasts, Radical Futures: Reckoning with the Past in Turkey. Her talk will explore the temporalities shaping both the search for justice led by the relatives of the disappeared and the enduring cycles of violence, conflict, and impunity in Turkey.

Rules Under Pressure: How Radical Right Populists Are Reshaping Europe’s Parliaments

Wed, 27 May 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Europe’s legislatures are under increasing pressure from radical right populist parties that claim to embody the unfiltered “will of the people” and challenge the legitimacy of parliamentary institutions. Historically, once in office, mainstream parties have relied on procedural mechanisms, many dating to the 19th century, that favour swift government business. This project examines whether the entry of radical right populist parties in European parliaments prompts systematic alterations to these procedures, thereby either restricting or expanding individual MPs’ rights to speak, propose legislation, and scrutinise the executive. Methodologically, the project will integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches within a comparative framework. First, it adopts the ParlRulesData method to track textual amendments in parliamentary rules of procedure over time, capturing macro-level (broad textual shifts), meso-level (specific policy areas), and micro-level (individual rule clauses) changes. Second, it draws on archival materials, semi-structured interviews with MPs and parliamentary staff, and direct observations of parliamentary sessions to clarify how radical right party entry interacts with legislative reform.

State, Citizenship, and Law in Crisis

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:20:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Pleaser register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de. Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.

Schools and Positive Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights: What Implications for Democracy in Europe?

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Schools are crucial institutions in democracy. They are hubs of community togetherness, often the first place where children experience the power of the state, and crucial places of academic learning and socialisation vital for downstream rights and the ability to participate in democratic society. Equally, positive obligations have long been considered the “hallmark” of the European Court of Human Rights, which defines minimum obligations to comply with the ECHR, including what Council of Europe member states must do to secure respect for human rights in schools. Yet, no scholars have looked comprehensively at what positive obligations exist in relation to schooling in the member states of the Council of Europe. This is surprising as a brief survey of the case-law indicates that positive obligations actually play a significant role in defining the rights and obligations that exist vis-à-vis schools in a number of diverse areas, from keeping children safe in school to undoing histories of racial discrimination in schools to reasonably accommodating schoolchildren with disabilities. In line with this, this project seeks to typologise, conceptualise and theorise regarding the link between positive obligations and schools under the ECHR, utilising Amy Guttman’s pioneering book Democratic Education as a frame.

Indigenous Affinities: Toward Solidarity Across the Global South

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:30:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Gaza’s Children Write Back: Child-Authored Writing, War, and Political Agency

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Constitutional Democracy and Its Capacity for Self-Preservation in a Multipolar World: The Concept of Defensive Democracy in Germany, Ukraine, and the Broader European Experience

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0200

After the full-scale invasion, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine characterized Ukraine as a "self-defending democracy." This notion, close to militant democracy, means that despite martial law, restrictions on human rights must remain proportionate and justified to ensure the preservation of statehood. Germany was the first European country to embed the idea of a democracy capable of defending itself against anti-democratic forces. Drawing on the Basic Law of 1949, the German model rests on a commitment to democratic values, defensive capacity, and the promotion of democracy’s protection. Yet a fundamental concern follows: are these mechanisms enough? What if a party that complies with the constitution gains total control over the state? For Ukraine, the preservation of statehood should not be understood narrowly or instrumentally, and the limits of militant democracy’s toolbox must be carefully studied. As democratic states increasingly rely on national legal frameworks, Ukraine must harmonize its constitutional doctrine with the jurisprudence and constitutional principles of the European Union—while ensuring that defensive democracy does not become a threat itself. The research asks how democracies can defend themselves without undermining fundamental rights—and whether Ukraine’s constitutional framework is ready for this challenge under and after martial law.

Translate and Rule: Justice, Arabic Literature, and the Colonial Archive

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Feminist Comics in Arab and Latin American Protest Cultures

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Bi-Nationalism and the Future of Israel

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Narratives of Female Criminality in Turkish Literature and the Press: A Comparative Analysis (1870-1935)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Queer Temporalities and Cultural Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0200

This workshop addresses questions of time and temporality in Central and Eastern European literatures from queer perspectives, with a focus on Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russia. Organized within the framework of EUTIM project, it explores how questions of time, sexuality, and literary form intersect across different historical moments and cultural settings.

Over the past decades, queer temporality—developed and articulated in literary and cultural theory by scholars such as Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam, Lee Edelman, and José Esteban Muñoz—has provided a way to describe and analyze literary conceptualizations of time in relation to queer experience, desire, and intimacy. Rather than treating time as linear or developmental, this scholarship has emphasized temporal phenomena such as delay, belatedness, interruption, repetition, and alternative temporal horizons. While approaches to queer temporality differ in their political implications and theoretical commitments, they share a concern with how dominant temporal regimes structure belonging, futurity, inclusion, and exclusion.

In the literary contexts of Central and Eastern Europe of the 20th and 21st centuries, questions of queer time intersect with particular historical conditions, including censorship, displacement, the fragmentation and uneven transmission of literary heritage, and shifting regimes of visibility, as well as with culturally specific ways of articulating same-sex desire. Against this background, the workshop brings together work on different literary traditions and languages to explore how literary texts engage with temporal structures through representations of sexuality, attachment, and non-aligned life trajectories shaped by political rupture, social transformation, and migration.

The workshop foregrounds literary analysis of a wide range of textual materials, including poetry, prose, drama, essays, diaries, correspondence, and other forms of life writing, in which temporal experience becomes narratively legible. Special attention is given to problems of archival absence, fragmentary textual survival, and locally situated narrative practices, understood not only as methodological challenges but also as constitutive elements of queer temporal experience.

Alongside research on lesser-known or understudied authors and corpora, the workshop also invites renewed engagement with more established figures commonly associated with queer literary history. In such cases, the emphasis lies on re-examining their temporal configurations and literary forms, rather than on reaffirming their canonical status.

The workshop will result in an edited volume featuring contributions from participants.

- more information follows -

Global Hijra: A Modern History of Muslim Refugee Migration

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.

Something is Passing in the Night: Iranian Hyphenates in the World

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:00:00 +0200

More information will follow soon.