Inward Turn: European and German Foreign Policy towards the Maghreb in Times of Populism

Date of visit: 02.12.2024 – 06.12.2024

Hubert ZIMMERMANN is Professor of International Relations at Philipps University Marburg, Germany.  After graduating from the European University Institute in Florence (Italy), he has held, among others, positions at Düsseldorf University (Germany) and Cornell University (USA). His current research focuses on international security, global financial and monetary policy, the European Union (in particular its foreign economic and security policies), foreign military intervention, and transatlantic relations.

The war in Ukraine, the pandemic, the increasing nationalist turn of US security and economic policy, the divisions engendered by the war in Gaza and the ongoing migration crisis: all these factors have led to an increasing introspection in European and German foreign policy. Growing populist movements in the member states, mainly from the right, have put increasing pressure on the liberal-internationalist foreign policies of the EU and its member states. How does this impact European and German foreign policy towards the Maghreb? The contribution argues that international and domestic factors will result in a more transactional foreign policy towards a region which was once a core target of European human development, stabilization and democracy promotion policies.

The Realities of Refugee Work Rights: Policy Gaps and the Consequences for Violence

Date of visit: 05.11.2024 -16.11.2024

Prof. Dr. Heidrun Bohnet (University of Continuing Education Krems) and Grace Gacki (University of Pittsburgh)

Heidrun Bohnet is Associate Professor of Migration and Conflict Research at the University of Continuing Education Krems in Austria. She is currently leading the ERC Starting Grant project “MixedRivals”, which examines the perceptions of threat and inequality and the risk of violence between different migrant groups in North Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Previous studies have often relied on de jure refugee policy data, overlooking the complex realities on the ground. Using new de facto refugee rights data from Africa, this paper examines how practical restrictions on work rights impact conflict. The findings reveal that implementation gaps significantly increase the risk of violence. Therefore, ensuring the practical enforcement of refugee rights is crucial for preventing conflict.

Colonial Mediterranean in Late Antiquity: The Struggle between diverse Language Levels. (Identities and Beliefs)

Date of visit:  02.11.2024 -10.11.2024

Moacyr Novaes, Prof. Dr. at Universidade de São Paulo – Brazil, is a Principal Investigator at Mecila – Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, member of Cepame – Centro de Estudos de Filosofia Patrística e Medieval de São Paulo and of the GT-History of Medieval Philosophy as Reception of Ancient Philosophy, at the National Association of Post-Graduation Studies in Philosophy.

Some of Augustine of Hippo’s works can be examined as historical testimonies of a philosophical critique of linguistic exclusivity or domination with regard to knowledge and the transmission of truth. These testimonies point to new philosophical possibilities in contemporary decolonial debates about the subalternity of languages and insurgent voices.

The instrumental role of language and normative grammar for domination and subalternation is well known about modern colonial times. In late antique North Africa, the struggle between high standards of classical Latin and a popular Latin mixed with Punic elements can also be regarded as a dispute in a colonial context. The almost uncontested authority of Vergil as a poet in the whole late Roman Empire is an example of domination through language, from basic grammar school to the refined works of literature, as Macrobius Saturnalia. However, this role model was challenged by popular language in different ways, as testified by an African Philosopher: Augustine of Hippo examined the limits and failures of human language in general, and elitarian colonial Latin in particular, showing the philosophical and literary virtues of popular language. In effect, some works of Augustine can be examined as historical testimonies of a philosophical critique of linguistic exclusivity or domination,
regarding the knowledge of truth, its transmission, or the legitimate ways of human communication. Works as On the Teacher and On Christian Doctrine present analyses of language and grammatical correctness which contest the exclusivity of high-brow language and literature, and show the philosophical and literary value of (christian) popular ways of expression. In this presentation we would like to underline contemporary possibilities of recovering Augustine’s philosophical works for decolonial debates about language domination, subalternation and insurgent voices.

Breaking Taboos as a Political Strategy: Right-wing Populism and Anti-Gender Politics

Date of visit: 3-9.3.2024

Prof. Dr. Annette Henninger is a professor for gender and politics at the University of Marburg. Her areas of expertise include labor market, family and gender equality policies, intersectionality and democracy, and anti-feminist mobilizations.

Dr. Funda Hülagü is a research associate and sessional lecturer at the University of Marburg. Her current research interests include organized anti-feminism in Turkey, anti-gender politics in authoritarian settings and critical theory. Hülagü has several publications on state restructuring in Turkey with a focus on gender politics.

Anti-gender campaigns are spreading globally in the wake of a ‘populist moment’ (Graff/Korolczuk 2021). Right-wing populist actors denounce progressive norms concerning the rights of women and LGBTQI+ individuals as a project of globalized elite. Instead, they appeal to the common sense of ‘the people’ whose will should be represented in politics – and thus apply classical populist strategies (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2017). This paper argues that there have been substantial social struggles and consensus-building processes, which made the concept of gender equality a political norm and its breaking a taboo. By invoking common sense arguments to deliberately break these taboos, right-wing populist actors discredit these progressive norms; alter the dominant political discourse; demoralize the progressive opposition forces, and engineer a ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) that serves into the hands of a range of retrogressive actors.

Yet, this strategy of norm breaking is not effective at all times and places. Hence, a second objective of this paper is to discuss when and under which socio-economic and politicalcultural conditions these strategies succeed, and when they fail in achieving their goals. We provide a comparative analysis of the conflicts around marriage and divorce politics in Germany and Turkey to discuss the following questions: when does the taboo-breaking act of right-wing populism resonate with the common sense? How do social structures and public opinion affect the perception of norms that are broken? What is the role of political counterdiscourses?

Oil for Food: The Global Food Crisis and the Middle East

Date of visit: 07-12.12.2023

Eckart Woertz is director of the Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES) at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg and professor for contemporary history and politics of the Middle East at the University of Hamburg. His research interests encompass the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, food security and energy issues. He is author of Oil for Food (Oxford University Press 2013), co-editor of the Water-Energy Food Nexus in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge 2016) and has published in leading academic journals such as Food Policy, Food Security, Middle East Journal, Mediterranean Politics, The International Journal of Water Resources Development and Globalizations. Besides academic publications he has contributed to numerous consultancy and policy reports for clients in the Middle East and at international organizations. Previously he held positions at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), Sciences Po in Paris, Princeton University and the Gulf Research Center in Dubai and worked for banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates in equity and fixed income trading.

The talk analyzes agricultural development in countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the postwar decades and how food security has interacted with geopolitical risk factors from the oil crisis of the 1970s to the global food crisis 2007/08 and the impact of the war in Ukraine. Special attention is being paid to interconnections between water and food security and how they interact within the Water-Energy-Food nexus.

Invariant Spinors on Homogeneous Spheres (Joint work with Jordan Hofmann and Marie-Amelie Lawn, London)

Date of visit:   : 31.10-04.11.2023

Prof. Dr. habil. Ilka Agricola is a Professor of Mathematics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Phillips-Universität Marburg, Member of the Senate of Philipps-Universität Marburg, Head of the Vertrauensrat. She is also director of the Collection of Mathematical Models, research area: Differential Geometry and Global Analysis and was President 2021-22 of the DMV (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung).

The classification of transitive sphere actions induces nine different homogeneous realizations of the sphere. We explain what a homogeneous spin structure is and describe which homogeneous spheres admit one (which is then unique).  In each of the cases we determine the dimension of the space of invariant spinor fields, give their explicit description, and study the underlying related geometric structures depending on the metric.  We will sketch how the highly non-trivial representation theoretic computations are based on a rather unusual description of the spin representation in terms of exterior forms.