Contributors

Carolin Emcke, publicist and philosopher, studied philosophy in London, Frankfurt am Main and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She completed her doctoral dissertation on the term “collective identity.” From 1998 to 2014, Emcke visited and wrote about crisis regions throughout the world (Kosovo, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Colombia, Haiti, the US). In 2003–04, she was Visiting Lecturer for Political Theory at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2014, she has worked as a freelance publicist, and in her books, essays, columns, and artistic interventions, she addresses themes of violence and trauma, sexuality and desire, hostility toward democracy and racism. For over ten years, Emcke has organized and chaired the monthly discussion series Streitraum at the Schaubühne Berlin. She has received numerous awards for her work, among others the Theodor Wolff Prize, the Lessing Prize of the Free State of Saxony, the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize of the German Academy for Language and Literature, the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and, most recently, the Carl von Ossietzky Prize. Her publications include Echoes of violence: letters from a war reporter (2004, Eng. 2007), Stumme Gewalt. Nachdenken über die RAF (2008), How We Desire (2012, Eng. 2018), Weil es sagbar ist. Über Zeugenschaft und Gerechtigkeit (2013) and Against Hate (2016, Eng. 2019), as well as the lecture-performance Ja heißt ja und … (2019). Her most recent publication is Journal. Tagebuch in Zeiten der Pandemie (2021).

Manuela Bojadžijev is Professor at the Institute for European Ethnology in the Department of Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin. She additionally heads the department Social Networks and Cultural Lifestyles at Humboldt University’s Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research and is Visiting Professor in the Department of Cultural Science at the Leuphana University Lüneberg. In various research projects (financed by the German Research Foundation, European Commission, Humanities in the European Research Area, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Volkswagen Foundation, and Berlin University Alliance), Bojadžijev has conducted research and published on migration and racism, digitalization and labour.

Bernd Scherer has been director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt since 2006. The philosopher focused the program on the examination of transformation processes in our societies; post-colonial structures, ecological and technological upheavals. It began with projects such as The Potosí Principle (2009–2010) and Über Lebenskunst (2010–2011) and, starting in 2012, the multi-year research projects The Anthropocene Project, 100 Years of Now and The New Alphabet, which includes the event series Dictionary of Now (2015–2018). He thus advanced HKW from an institution that represented non-European cultures to a laboratory of ideas in the making for a world that is changing not only globally, but also planetarily. One chief curatorial approach taken by Bernd Scherer and his team is to interweave art and science, politics and technology. The program is developed collaboratively with international artists and researchers in the interests of a variety of perspectives. Scherer has been an honorary professor at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin since 2011. Before he became director of HKW, he headed the Goethe-Institut Mexico from 1999 to 2004 and then the Arts Department at the Goethe-Institut head office in Munich. He is co-editor of books including Das Anthropozän – Zum Stand der Dinge (2015), Wörterbuch der Gegenwart (2019) and Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) (2021).

Mohammad A. S. Sarhangi studied history and German philology in Hamburg. He completed his doctorate on the reception and representation of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg as well as at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin. He subsequently worked at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as one of the project coordinators for the Archive of Refuge.

Nadja Hermann studied Film/ Series Production at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg. Since 2011 she has lived and worked in Berlin. As a free-lance production manager, she has been responsible for a range of documentary and experimental films, but also radio and stage plays. She has been working as a production manager with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin for several years.

Heidi Specogna is a documentary filmmaker and Professor of Documentary Film at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. Her films illuminate, among other things, crisis regions, questioning the responsibility of the West in these areas. For Cahier Africain (2016), on the victims of war crimes in the Central African Republic, Specogna received the Lola, the German Film Prize. In 2019, she was awarded the Konrad Wolf Prize of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin.

Lilian-Astrid Geese studied applied cultural science and linguistics. She is a conference interpreter and translator of English, French and Spanish and lives in Berlin. She specializes in the topics of film, theater, literature, music, art, architecture and design. Her regular clients include numerous national and international cultural institutions, museums, art collections, theaters and publishers. For many years, Geese has managed language teams and interpreted at the International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund|Cologne as well as numerous other film and literature festivals. She occasionally publishes reviews and, in 2020, translated Tima Kurdi’s moving book Der Junge am Strand (The Boy on the Beach).

Inken Stern is a lawyer in Berlin whose practice focuses on the right of asylum and right of residence in Berlin. As part of this work, she regularly conducts classes and training in these legal fields for full-time and voluntary refugee relief workers. She has been a member of the board of directors of the Berlin Bar Association since March 2019.

Malek Bajbouj is Professor of Psychiatry and Affective Neuroscience at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He studies how emotions and emotional memory are represented in the human brain and are influenced by environmental and cultural factors. As head of the research group Global Mental Health, he has initiated numerous projects in Germany and the Middle and Far East that have developed local, culturally sensitive treatments for refugees as well as embedding them in an institutional framework.

Stefanie Schüler-Springorum is Director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin and Co-Director of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg. Her fields of work are German-Jewish and Spanish history, National Socialism and nineteenth- and twentieth-century gender history. She is the editor of the Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung.

Karen Khurana is Head of Digital at HKW. She is in charge of the digital projects, developments and communication of the Haus. She is editor-in-chief of the website and the various digital HKW channels. Previously, she has worked as Head of Communications for different institutions, she was an editor at De:Bug magazine as well as Carta and has published in numerous magazines and journals.

Mohamed Amjahid is a political journalist, book author and discussion moderator. He was an editor at ZEITmagazin and has been awarded, among others, the Alexander Rhomberg Prize and the Nannen Prize. From January to March 2022, he will be a fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. His nonfiction debut, Unter Weißen. Was es heißt, privilegiert zu sein (2017), received considerable attention. His latest book, Der weiße Fleck. Eine Anleitung zu antirassistischem Denken, was published in March 2021. He lives in Berlin.

Gabriele von Arnim was based in New York as a freelance journalist between 1973 and 1983, following her studies and the completion of her doctorate. She subsequently wrote for, among other outlets, Die Zeit, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the BR, and WDR and worked as a moderator for ARTE and the SWR. Von Arnim writes reviews for newspapers and radio, moderates readings, and has published numerous books. She currently lives in Berlin. Her nonfiction book Das Leben ist ein vorübergehender Zustand was published in July 2021.

Eva Gilmer is an editor and translator of scientific texts. She studied psychology, philosophy, modern German literature and psychoanalysis in Darmstadt and Frankfurt am Main. Since 2003, she has worked for Suhrkamp Verlag, where she has headed the science and nonfiction program since 2016.

Charlene Lynch is a social worker in Berlin and works with refugees, in particular in juvenile residential facilities and communal housing. As a cultural studies graduate, she spent many years working as a curator at the City Museum Berlin and the exhibition office Die Exponauten. Since 2014, Lynch has also worked on a voluntary basis to provide support to people with refugee status upon arrival and during their everyday life in Germany.

Ethel Matala de Mazza was appointed Professor of Modern German Literature at Humboldt University of Berlin in 2010. The focus of her work is the literary and theoretical history of the political imaginary as well as the mutual interactions between democracy and mass culture. She is a member of the advisory committee for the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. Her most recent publication is Der populäre Pakt. Verhandlungen der Moderne zwischen Operette und Feuilleton (2018).

Mohammad A. S. Sarhangi studied history and German philology in Hamburg. He completed his doctorate on the reception and representation of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg as well as at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin. He subsequently worked at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as one of the project coordinators for the Archive of Refuge.

Amir Theilhaber studied international affairs at the Vesalius College, Vrije University, Brussels; Islamic and Near East studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and history at the Technical University Berlin. He managed a legal advice office for refugees in Cairo, built up the student registry at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin and conducted research into the circulation of Oriental knowledge between Germany and the US at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. In his habilitation project at Bielefeld University, he examined the ethnological collection of the Lippisches Landesmuseum in Detmold as a global history of accumulation, fragmentation, indifference and contestation from 1835 to today.

Joseph Vogl is Professor of Modern German Literature, Literature and Cultural and Media Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and Permanent Visiting Professor at Princeton University, New Jersey. His most recent publications include Kapital und Ressentiment. Eine kurze Theorie der Gegenwart (2021), Senkblei der Geschichten. Gespräche (with Alexander Kluge, 2020), Der Souveränitätseffekt (2015) and Das Gespenst des Kapitals (2010).

Éva Ádám, Fatuma Musa Afrah, Ibraimo Alberto, Mouna Aleek, Kerim Borovina, Bino Byansi Byakuleka, Dao Quang Vinh, Samra Habta, Freweyni Habtemariam, Ranjith Henayaka-Lochbihler, Ahmad Hussainy, Muhammed Lahmin Jadama, Zeynep Kıvılcım, Levent Konca, Yiwu Liao, Gudrun Lintzel, Eric Mbiakeu, Blaise Baneh Mbuh, Yasmin Merei, Mira, Mila Mossafer, Lucía Muriel, Abdulkadir Musa, Nelly Neufeld, Hamid Nowzari, Saloua Nyazy, Stephen Okumu, Saideh Saadat-Lendle, Nadja Salzmann, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Kava Spartak, Remzija Suljić, Bashar Taha, Viktor, Bruno Watara, Regina Werbert-Lehmann, Max Welch Guerra, Moro Yapha, Hayyan Al Yousouf, Fatima Youssouf

Jule Katinka Cramer, Katharina Diessner, Thomas Keller, Anne Misselwitz, Luise Schröder, Carmen Treichl

Manja Ebert, Joscha Eickel, Adel Gamehdar, Matthias Hartenberger, Florian Hoffmann, Anastasios Papiomytoglou

Stephan Barthel, Benjamin Brandt, buk filmbau, Jason Dorn, Simon Franzkowiak, Martin Gehrmann, Bastian Heide, Matthias Henkel, Kujawa Raumdesign, Leonardo Rende, Andrew Schmidt, Stefan Seitz, Klaus Tabert

Petja von Bredow, Wiebke Hofmann

Concept AV – Stefan Engelkamp, Stefan Gohlke

Jonathan Schorr

a prima vista

Kortwich Filmtontechnik

Lilian-Astrid Geese

Ahmed Mahadi, Lilian-Astrid Geese, Freweyni Habtemariam, Jing Möll, Duc Thang Nguyen, Günther Orth, Christoph Rolle, Mercede Salehpour, Alexander Schmitt

Elif Amberg, Joni Barnard, Anna Bartholdy, Ulrike Bernard, Jennifer Brandt, Madeleine Dallmeyer, Julie Dorstewitz, Helen Ferguson, Lilian-Astrid Geese, Cornelia Herfurtner, Simone Hess, Kerstin Krolak, Elisa Purfürst, Lena Scheidgen, Colin Shepherd, Katherine Vanovitch, Sebastian Weitemeier, Martina Würzburg

Shohreh Shakoory

Matthias Hartenberger, Anastasios Papiomytoglou

Jozefina Chetko

Jonathan Schorr

Oliver Corff, James Crompton, Viky Feghali, Lilian-Astrid Geese, Marcus Grauer, Niels Hamdorf, Antoinette Janko, Catherine Johnson, Günther Orth, Katherine Vanovitch, Sebastian Weitemeier

Silke Krieg

Georg Lauteren

Antje Kramer, Andrea Schreiber, Andrea Schubert, Bibiana Weinke

Amaro Drom e.V., Daniel Baranowski, Sarah Bornhorst (Stiftung Berliner Mauer), Raphael Brunning, Clement Doku, LesMigras – Antidiskriminierungs- und Antigewaltbereich der Lesbenberatung Berlin e.V., Aram Lintzel, Mouna Maaroufi, Kristina Mashimi (FU Berlin), Verena Lucia Nägel (CeDiS, FU Berlin), Cord Pagenstecher (CeDiS, FU Berlin), Thomas Rudhof-Seibert (medico international), Bosiljka Schedlich, Julia Schnegg, Susanne Schwarz (Concept AV), „Das Team vom Begleitprogramm – Learning by doing“ der Berliner Stadtmission, Herr Thanh Nguyen Huu, Vereinigung der Vietnamesen in Berlin & Brandenburg e.V., Verein Iranischer Flüchtlinge in Berlin e.V., YAAR e.V., Ridvan Yumlu-Schiessl