Ringvorlesung: „Research at Risk“

Dieses Wintersemester findet die Ringvorlesung „Research at Risk“ statt. Donnerstags von 18-20h können sie via Zoom an dieser teilnehmen. Weitere Informationen findet sie weiter unten in diesem Beitrag.

Bitte melden sie sich vorher über die akukraineflucht@gfmedienwissenschaft.de an.


(german below)

Lecture Series „Research at Risk“
Thursdays, 6-8 pm (c.t.), via zoom
Dates: 24.11.; 01. & 08. & 15.12.; 12. & 19. & 26.01.; 02.02
Please Register: akukraineflucht@gfmedienwissenschaft.de

The lecture series is an invitation to discuss the challenges of research in media and cultural studies in crises and war regions.To do justice to the complex situation, experts from various disciplinary and geographical-political situations/positions will be invited to speak in the lecture series.

The lecture will focus on research practices in war and crises as well as on scientific/activist work on war and crises. Specifically, we will address the questions of how research, education and study can be carried out under hostile conditions and what influence war, political oppression and other crisis-related impacts have on the production of knowledge. When flight and displacement occur, which forms of knowledge and cultures become recognisable in (German) academia, and which are excluded? What significance do academics and students attach to media in these situations? What can a close look at the use of different media in war and crisis situations reveal?

The lecture series „Research at Risk“ is a cooperation project of German media scholars: the Graduiertenkolleg 2132 “Das Dokumentarische” and the Faculty for Philology at Ruhr University Bochum, the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at Siegen, the CRC 1472 “Transformationen des Populären“ at Siegen, the Media Studies department at the University of Siegen, and the European Media Studies at the University Flensburg.

Students or people interested in a credit can take part in the accompanying seminar. All information can be found here. For registration please contact philipp.hohmann@rub.de

The lecture series „Research at Risk“ is a cooperation project of German media scholars and supported by: Graduiertenkolleg 2132 “Das Dokumentarische” and Faculty for Philology at Ruhr University Bochum; CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation”, CRC 1472 “Transformationen des Populären“ and the Media Studies department at the University of Siegen; the European Media Studies at the University Flensburg.


Die Ringvorlesung lädt dazu ein, die Herausforderung von medien- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung in Krisen und Kriegsregionen zu reflektieren. Um der komplexen Gemengelage Rechnung zu tragen, kommen in der Ringvorlesung Akteur*innen aus verschiedenen disziplinären wie geografisch-politischen Situationen/Positionen zu Wort. 

Dabei soll es genauso um die Forschungserfahrung in, als auch um die wissenschaftliche/aktivistische Arbeit an Krieg und Krisen gehen. Konkret geht es um die Fragen, wie unter widrigen Umständen geforscht, gelehrt und studiert werden kann und welchen Einfluss Krieg, politische Unterdrückung und andere krisenhafte Einflüsse auf die Wissensproduktion nehmen. Welche Wissensformen und Kulturen werden im Falle von Flucht und Vertreibung im (deutschen) akademischen Betrieb anerkennbar, welche werden ausgeschlossen? Welchen Stellenwert messen Wissenschaftler*innen und Student*innen in diesen Situationen Medien bei? Was zeigt sich bei einem genauen Blick auf die Nutzung verschiedener Medien in Kriegs- und Krisensituationen?

Die RVL “Research at Risk” ist ein Kooperationsprojekt von Medienwissenschaftler*innen verschiedener deutscher Universitäten, unter anderem der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, der Universität Siegen und der Europa-Universität Flensburg.

Studierende oder andere Interessierte, für die eine Kreditierung der Teilnahme von Interesse ist, können am Begleitseminar der Bochumer Medienwissenschaft teilnehmen. Alle Informationen finden sich hier. Für Rückfragen oder Anmeldungen wenden Sie sich bitte an philipp.hohmann@rub.de

Die Ringvorlesung „Research at Risk“ ist ein Kooperationsprojekt verschiedener medienwissenschaftlicher Instiutionen: des Graduiertenkollegs 2132 „Das Dokumentarische“ und der Fakultät für Philologie der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, des SFB 1187 „Medien der Kooperation“, des SFB 1472 „Transformationen des Populären“ sowie des Fachbereichs Medienwissenschaft der Universität Siegen und der Europäischen Medienwissenschaft der Universität Flensburg.


24.11. 2022 – Dr. Svitlana Matviyenko –> Verschoben auf den 15.12.2022
Production of Terror: Witnessing, Knowing, Remembering
Since the beginning of a full-scale invasion of the sovereign territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian journalists, scholars, activists, and people overall have been collecting evidence of the Russian war crimes. This talk will consider the labour of witnessing – from recovering and remembering personal traumatic accounts to confronting various documentations of atrocities – the labour that the subject of witnessing performs, often without a possibility to disengage.

01.12.2022 – Dr. Azadeh Ganjeh
The Othering of Researchers in Diaspora
In her lecture, Azadeh Ganjeh talks about the opportunities and challenges of a scientist in exile who has to reclaim a professional identity in a Eurocentric research system. In view of the current developments in Iran, Azadeh Ganjeh will of course comment on what is happening there and the role of (theatre, culture and media) science and academia in this uprising for „Women, Life, Freedom“.

08.12.2022 – Samim Farahmand
Cultural Studies – In and Outside Afghanistan
Samim Farahmand was head of the theatre department at Kabul University before the Taliban seized power and he had to leave the country. The Faculty of Fine Arts had to close and Afghanistan’s entire cultural sector came to a standstill. Many cultural workers had to flee abroad. Samim Farahmand, who now lives in Germany, reports on the collapse of the Afghan cultural scene and life as a scholar in the diaspora.

15.12.2022 – Dr. Svitlana Matviyenko
Production of Terror: Witnessing, Knowing, Remembering
Since the beginning of a full-scale invasion of the sovereign territory of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian journalists, scholars, activists, and people overall have been collecting evidence of the Russian war crimes. This talk will consider the labour of witnessing – from recovering and remembering personal traumatic accounts to confronting various documentations of atrocities – the labour that the subject of witnessing performs, often without a possibility to disengage.

12.01.2023 – Dr. Asli Telli
Academic freedom at the nexus of internationalization: Enforced or intended?
Internationalization is not only a dominant policy discourse in higher education today, but also a complex assemblage of values. These values are linked to economic growth and prosperity, global citizenship, transnational identity capital, social cohesion, intercultural competencies and soft power. The main focus in this talk is the impact of uneven opportunity structures on displaced academics. In existing literature, though limited, the category of a displaced academic corresponds to the condition of exile and resettlement, due to war, confliict, natural disaster or political instability (McLaughlin et al 2020; Salehyan 2019). Thus, internationalization is a policy intervention by governments, but how these interventions are interpreted and practiced by HEIs is also an important signifier worth a debate. This talk, further, aims to discuss the nexus of forced/intended internationalization and mobility schemes within the framework of comparative national cases in Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK. These cases provide insight for challenges regarding neoliberal measures, academic freedoms, life-work issues including the precarity of displaced academics in current European higher education landscape. Mapping these issues and challenges with their intersectional threads may, further, develop perspectives for breaking through the neoliberal surge in European academia.

19.01.2023 – Oleksiy Radynski
The Deal of the Century: Towards the Genealogy of Fossil Fascism.
In 1970, a contract was signed between the USSR and the Federal Republic of Germany, envisioning the deliveries of Siberian natural gas in exchange for German technology. This ‘Deal of the century’, as dubbed by the Soviet media, is known in the West under a humbler name ‘gas in exchange for pipes’. The presentation looks at the afterlife of this deal between Russia and Germany and discusses the impact on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine as well as ideological implications of extractivism and trade with Russian fossil fuels and how this affects Russian (and German) politics. Taking 1970 as a point of departure, it’s worth asking: What if the Pipe is the new Wall, an infrastructure of oppression that’s fluid rather than rigid, dissecting and transversing the continent with invisible energy flows that help authoritarian economic models dominate over democratic politics?

26.01.2023 – Prof. Dr. Kateryna Myhaylyova
Media Space as a Means of Forming Social Memory of the War: Case of Ukraine-2022
This Lecture will focus on three central points:

  1. Theoretical foundations for social memory analysis. Social memory as a construct outside of time. Attributes of social memory in the theories of Halbwachs, Warburg, Assman, Tosh, Nora.
  2. Media as a way of filling social memory „boxes“ . A brief overview of the possibilities. Military media in Ukraine: distribution and characteristics of audiences. Redistribution of consumption. New media space: quantity and quality.
  3. Media content in Ukrainian realities: substantive accents. Constructing the future: what is embedded in the social memory of the media about the war, which is not yet over…

02.02.2023 – Dr. Bridget Fonkeu
Translanguaging, a strategic tool for teaching and learning in the German
classrooms: The case of multilingual Cameroonian immigrants.

Translanguaging is a pedagogical program where two or more languages are simultaneously used in the classroom. One language is used to teach and instruct the students, but the student’s output is sometimes allowed to be in their L1/Mother tongue. This practice gives the students“ a time to shine“. Students can be encouraged to communicate and make meaning by drawing on and intermingling linguistic features from the different languages in their repertoire. Translanguaging helps students and teachers fully understand the communicative repertoires they bring to the learning arena. It also helps the teacher identify how to draw on those repertoires for successful educational practices for the students concerned. This thesis, therefore, recommends translanguaging in the educational process of immigrants.
„If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in
his language, that goes to his heart“- Nelson Mandela.