By Rim Naguib. In January 1907, days of demonstrations swept through the streets and port of Alexandria and spread to Cairo. They had been provoked by the arrest of three migrant trade unionists from Odessa on accusations of intended sabotage on a Russian ship. Through this little-known event, much is revealed of the nature of colonial governance and the rule of difference. The event sheds light on the possibilities of a movement of anti-authoritarianism and solidarity that cuts across race,...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Mohamed ‘Arafa. In democratic societies, the relationship between democracy and religion can be harmonious, as democracy ensures the freedom to practice religion, while religious diversity can enrich public discourse. This post explores the intersection of democracy, judicial review, and Shārīe‘ā law, focusing on the tensions and possibilities that arise when religious legal principles interact with democratic governance. It discusses how Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution, whic...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Marcial A. G. Suarez. The article aims to introduce the concept of hybrid governance as a form of mediation between tri-dimensional political actors: the state; violent non-state actors (VNSAs), and society. Since the 1980s, Latin America has been experiencing the emergence of several VNSAs with governance capacities, originating from distinct factors among which are economic, political, and social crises, as well as intrastate conflicts. We explore the strategies developed in Mexican civi...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Idriss Jebari. The question “Is there a Moroccan Thought?” drives the recent volume Contemporary Moroccan Thought by Mohamed Hashas (University of Rome Tor Vergata), published earlier this year by Brill. This review focusses on Hashas’s introductory essay titled “Rabat School of Thought: Tradition, Modernity, and Critique from the Edge.” At over 120 pages, it could represent a book in its own right. It contains the editor’s original and provocative answer to the above-mentioned...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Annamaria Bianco. In the late 1990s, the establishment of the border-free Schengen Area within the newly formed European Union was counterbalanced by sudden restrictions on the granting of visas to citizens of third countries. The novel Wadi Qandil (Wādī Qandīl), published in 2023 by the Spain-based writer and poet Nesrine Khoury, falls into the subcategory of “refugee futurism”. It contributes to the rewriting of the contemporary Mediterranean imaginary, proposing a heterotopic vis...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Nataliia Varha and Kathrine Vitus. Ukrainian youth who have experienced a full-scale war and who have found themselves in situations of forced migration undergo the process of growing up at an accelerated pace, often without the usual support systems – family, home, stability. Their transition to adulthood occurs in new cultural, economic, and social environments where personal choice, adaptability, and self-reliance become critically important. The project “The Transitions of Displace...| trafo.hypotheses.org
By Jennifer Orlando-Salling. In EU legal studies, time, space, place, and knowledge are locations for contestation, deliberation and reconstruction. A departure from methodological avenues ‘traditionally’ used in EU legal studies is not just timely but imperative to equip the field with the ability to engage with a broader array of options, viewpoints, knowledge(s), and strategies. The text shows how decolonial approaches can bridge the gap between history, theory, and action, offering p...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Nataliia Varha and Kathrine Vitus. Ukrainian youth who have experienced a full-scale war and who have found themselves in situations of forced migration undergo the process of growing up at an accelerated pace, often without the usual support systems – family, home, stability. Their transition to adulthood occurs in new cultural, economic, and social environments where personal choice, adaptability, and self-reliance become critically important. The project "The Transitions of Displaced ...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Clara-Auguste Süß in Conversation with Manuel Borutta. This conversation explores the historical interconnections, dependencies, and violence linking the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and how those have shaped social, political, and economic structures on both sides. It touches on the history of Mediterranean studies, struggles of decolonization today, and the role of scholars in the progress. Lastly, it looks at “the Mediterranean” as an analytical category and its ...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Von Erik Martin. Vom 25. bis 27. Juni 2025 richtete die Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) im Rahmen des Projekts „Europäische Zeiten/European Times“ (EUTIM) einen Workshop zu Fragen der Theorie und Geschichte der „Kleinen Literaturen“ aus. Die von Claudia Dathe, Oksana Pashko, Schamma Schahadat und Annette Werberger organisierte Veranstaltung brachte Literaturwissenschaftler·innen mit Expertise in ukrainischer, jiddischer, polnischer, rumänischer und bosnisch-herzego...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Raquel Rojas et al. Care seemed to have become one of the most urgent issues of our time amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This empirical analysis focuses on the cases of Argentina, Mexico, and Germany, based on original surveys conducted in the largest city of each country: Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Berlin. The analysis shows that different models of care provision translated into heterogeneous levels of support for the population during the crisis. Unequal access to care services determin...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Arthur Guerra Filho. Corruption scandals in political finance have shaken both the U.S. and Brazil, the two largest constitutional democracies in the Americas, forcing their Supreme Courts to deal with political finance issues. They share structural parallels—presidentialism, federalism, and multiethnic societies rooted in profound inequality—yet have charted different courses in regulating political finance. By deciding what kinds of financial influence are permissible, the respective...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Youssef Cherif. In recent years, a new migratory dynamic has emerged in Africa: the movement of Maghrebi entrepreneurs toward sub-Saharan Africa. This is a development that remains largely underexplored, despite its growing significance. While most public and scholarly attention has focused on the northbound migration of West Africans or the outward mobility of North Africans toward Europe, the southward shift of North African entrepreneurs—particularly from Tunisia and Morocco—offers ...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Tatjana Tönsmeyer is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Wuppertal. She is one of the most prominent scholars on the history of the Second World War and of occupation in Europe during that period. She also works on the history of memory and the post-history of National Socialism, as well as on questions concerning statehood, supply, and security. She is particularly committed to developing an integrated history of Western and Eastern Europe in their transatlan...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Hanan Natour. As part of this publication series on the decolonial Mediterranean, focusing on Tunisian literature serves as a gateway to creative engagements with the country’s significant geography. Tunisian literature links to the region in several directions — it is part of North African literature and modern Arabic literature. Grounded in the violent experience of colonialism, it also finds multiple ways of engaging with French literature from the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Juliane Prade-Weiss. One of the puzzling questions about Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and other conflicts is why people participate in, support, or condone mass violence when it appears, for observers, so glaringly wrong. Reasons for becoming complicit with violence against civilians vary with individual positions as well as historical and regional contexts. Participation in, aiding and abetting mass violence and the structures of authoritarian, totalitarian or other regimes exerting ...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Diana Abbani in Conversation with Nina Studer. In her book "The Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France’s Most Notorious Drink”, Studer explores the history of absinthe through the lenses of cultural, social, and colonial history. She uses absinthe as a lens which allows to look at racial inequalities, gender inequalities, class inequalities and more. She is led by the question how a consumption shared between various groups – men, women and children, bourgeoisie, artists and wor...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Sebastian Conrad. In this moment of rapid political and cultural change, a reassessment of what global history stands for, what it can contribute and where its limits lie is a timely exercise. Global history as a subfield has had a fast and successful career. Virtually unknown at the turn of the century, it has by now acquired an almost ubiquitous presence in the discipline. This first phase, the era of the field’s establishment was followed by a series of critical assessments. In the wa...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Denys Brylov and Tetiana Kalenychenko. With the beginning of its independent history, Ukrainian society experienced a religious renaissance, which also began to define identity. Identities did not always remain purely religious, but could also have a cultural and traditional character, such as the self-definition of a Ukrainian as a Christian, despite the country's multi-religious and multicultural map. Since 2022, the problem of the transformation of religious identities is further exacer...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Andrii Portnov. Ukrainian history and literature in the German higher education system are the disciplines whose institutional weakness is more than obvious. Ukraine itself, in the eyes of a large part of German (including academic) society, still does not have enough cultural and historical agency and remains ‘in the shadow of Russia’.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Lidia Kuzemska. We are quickly approaching the third anniversary of forced displacement from Ukraine due to the Russian full-scale invasion - a tragic benchmark no one wanted to believe in, let alone reach. I think it is time to reflect on how the situation related to the displacement of Ukrainians abroad has evolved during this period, and what trends can be expected in the near future. With this introductory post, I invite you to a conversation about the complex and entangled puzzle of U...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
C. Ceyhun Arslan is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Koç University and Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Forum Transregionale Studien and Saarland University. His first book, The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures, has just been published by Edinburgh University Press. He is working on his second book project entitled Becoming Mediterranean: Views from Arabic, French, and Ottoman Literatures.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Julia Buyskykh. For decades, anthropologists have been studying borders and borderlands, concentrating on marginalised groups (whether minorities, migrants, or refugees), cross-border state relations, border shadow economies, and the multiple identities of populations settling along borders, whose silenced voices often contradict official state narratives of history, identities, and religion. In this article, the author reflects upon her own experience, entangling it with current anthropol...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Qianrui Hu. Although Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shocked the whole world, Russia’s war against Ukraine started already in 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the military interventions in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine. This blog post tries to unpack the dialectical relationship between war, migration, and memory, the central research theme at Prisma Ukraїna, from the perspective of the people who have been experiencing this war since 2014.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Lidia Kuzemska. In April 2024, major German foundations organised a networking event for their Ukrainian fellows. Two days of discussions and exchange served not only to give the scholars from different fields space to mingle, but also to brainstorm about how they see their current role and future in academia (be it in Ukraine, in Germany or elsewhere). This text provides an overview of what Ukrainian researchers in Germany currently consider to be the most important challenges and how the...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
Wendy Pearlman is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University where she specializes in Middle East politics, social movements, and narrative approaches to understanding conflict and displacement. She has been EUME-CNMS Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Forum Transregionale Studien during the summers of the years 2016-2018 and 2021-2022. She is the author of "The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora" (Liveright Books, 2024)| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Dr Ruji Auethavornpipat. The European Commission’s Rule of Law Report, while assessing EU member states’ adherence to key rule of law principles, significantly lacks a focused evaluation of fundamental rights protections, especially for migrants. This oversight not only undermines the report’s comprehensive integrity but also reflects poorly on the EU’s commitment to its core democratic values.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Sebastián Eduardo Dávila. After experiencing the Alasitas Celebration in Puno, Peru, the author puts forward five theses on syncretism, or the amalgamation of different religions and cultures in the Andean region. By advancing an understanding of syncretism not as fusion, but as layering of experience through centuries marked by colonisation, diaspora, and resistance across the hemisphere, the author attempts to redraft the concept of syncretism.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
C. Ceyhun Arslan introduces his recently published book "The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures" which challenges assumptions about the modernization of Arabic and Turkish literatures, examining their evolution into national literatures comparable to Western ones. The book explores how Ottoman authors navigated multilingual influences, shaping literary traditions and national identities in the Middle East and North Africa. It highlights how late Ottoman and p...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Taygeti Michalakea. In the 2023 elections, Greece's 'New Democracy' party won a second term with 40.5% of the vote, while the opposition Syriza received only 17.8%. Smaller far-right parties also gained seats, raising concerns about the rule of law. Issues such as weakened independent institutions, lack of media freedom, widespread surveillance, and political interference in the judiciary are contributing to this decline. This text explores how these factors are undermining democracy and e...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Illia Ilin. The recent history of Ukraine can be metaphorically described as a journey to break away from the abusive "triune Russian people" family and reconnect with the democratic "European peoples" family. This long process of decolonization has been ongoing for over 30 years and signifies the reclamation of Ukrainian territories, history, and identity by the Ukrainian people. This article will explore the family metaphors of (de)colonization of Russia and unified Europe in relation to...| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
By Guita Hourani. The approximate 4,000 Ukrainians residing in Lebanon, mostly women married to Lebanese men, epitomize a community facing a complex web of challenges. Amid Lebanon's enduring economic and political upheavals and the relentless war in Ukraine, these women display remarkable resilience in navigating dual crises.| TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research
