Event Archive

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
How is the situation at the Poland-Belarus border shaping the future of migration policies in Europe? Can media narratives truly reflect the realities of those seeking refuge? What role do activists and grassroots movements play in defending human rights when governments turn a blind eye? How can journalists and activists work together to change harmful media narratives and influence global decision makers? Anna Alboth will address these and other questions in conversation with students and faculty.

This event is part of Agata Lisiak’s SO202 A Lexicon of Migration and open to everyone at BCB.

Anna Alboth is Polish journalist, media expert, and human rights defender. She published dozens of human rights stories, in Polish and international media, mainly focusing on minority rights and migration. She works as a global media officer at the Minority Rights Group International, where she coordinates media programs and brings journalists from around the world into the field. She co-organised different initiatives such as the Civil March For Aleppo (nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize), European Youth Press, and Grupa Granica, a grassroots initiative working on the Polish-Belarusian border. Anna is based in Berlin.

Online  5:00 pm – 6:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Remember all of the bureaucracy you had to go through when you first arrived at BCB? Now it’s time to do it all again (or in reverse)! Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe. This session will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we will talk about things that will apply to everyone, including how to cancel or update your health insurance, Ummeldung and Abmeldung, request transcripts and more. The second part will be dedicated to those who are on a student permit and are interested in staying in Germany after graduation. We will discuss the different options including transitioning to the jobseeker permit and extending the student permit for graduate studies. Amber will do her best to demystify the LEA by sharing tips, tricks, and timelines for navigating the process!

Meet joining video call link.

We will also be offering this session on Monday, 28 April from 12:30pm-1:30pm for those who are not yet figuratively or literally prepared to think about these things.

Part of Life After BCB series

Lecture Hall, Platanenstraße 98A, 13156 Berlin  6:00 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Yael Bartana is an observer of the contemporary and a pre-enactor. She employs art as a scalpel inside the mechanisms of power structures and navigates the fine and crackled line between the sociological and the imagination. In her films, installations, photographs, staged performances, and public monuments she investigates subjects like national identity, trauma, and displacement, often through ceremonies, memorials, public rituals, and collective gatherings.

Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including solo exhibitions at GL Strand Copenhagen (2024), Jewish Museum Berlin (2021), Fondazione Modena Arti Visive (2019/2020), and Philadelphia Museum of Art (2018). In 2024, her work was shown in the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennial.

The event with Yael Bartana is organized as part of the course 'Wannsee: Laboratory for the Future', led by Dr. Avi Feldman. Bartana's research and work in Wannsee will be discussed during the event in collaboration with the course students.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Talk on refugee visual and material culture by Mohammad Zaki Rezwan.

Rezwan's paper explores the emergence of rickshaw art and artisan practices by the Rohingya people in the refugee camp of Bangladesh. It also investigates how the encounter between Bangladeshi and Rohingya identities allows these refugees to seek resilience in the state of displacement through the reorientation of their Rohingya knowledge and skills. The mass exodus of the Rohingya people has resulted in an unprecedented reformulation of cultural identities. From the Rakhine state of Myanmar to Bangladesh, the displacement has often attracted a narrative of loss, never a story of creation. Despite the countless international efforts to preserve the cultural memory of the Rohingya community, the mushrooming of a diverse set of unrestricted and unregulated economic, mechanical, and cultural ventures through jugaad in the camps underscores their true resilience and willingness to sustain. As a case study, the paper examines the newly formed rickshaw art and artisan practice in the recently built, controversial Rohingya camp located in Bhasan Char, Bangladesh. I argue this practice is born out of the encounter between numerous Rohingya art and artisan practices and Bangladeshi rickshaw art, allowing the Rohingya people to incorporate their knowledge and skills in conjunction with what they have attained from the rickshaw art of Bangladesh. The paper analyzes a series of newly manufactured rickshaws in the camp and the aesthetics of their decorations to demonstrate how the foundation and fabric of these endeavors reflect not only the state of displacement but also the reformulation of belongingness. These rickshaws, with their colorful decorations, function like an archive in motion for this vulnerable community, where their stories will be written and rewritten indefinitely.

Mohammad Zaki Rezwan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University. He has over eight years of experience in teaching a diverse range of courses, including visual art and culture, film, media, communication, cultural studies, critical theory, postcolonial theory, and literature in English. He has previously worked as a Research Assistant for research projects at the University of Oxford and Simon Fraser University. He holds an MA in Comparative Media Arts from Simon Fraser University and an MA in Literatures in English and Cultural Studies from Jahangirnagar University. He curated the exhibition Unveiling in 2019 at Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. He previously worked as the Assistant Editor of Crossings: A Journal of English Studies and the Editor of the Comparative Media Arts (CMA) Journal. In 2020, he founded Rickshaw Art Archive (rickshawartarchive.org), a non-commercial, crowdsourced digital archive of rickshaw art in Bangladesh. He has published and presented his research at a wide range of peer-reviewed journals and international conferences around the world. His research interests lie in the areas of South Asian arts, aesthetics, film, media, and visual culture.

Lecture Hall  12:00 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The environmental impact of streaming media is now calculated to contribute 1% of greenhouse gas emissions and rising fast. Streaming comprises a significant proportion of the carbon footprint of information and communication technologies (ICT), which is calculated to contribute about 4% of global greenhouse gases, about the same as the airline industry. ICT is composed of data centers, networks, and devices that store, transmit, and display all our social media, videos, photos, and other large files, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence applications, etc. All these uses require huge amounts of electricity, and about 79% of global electricity comes from fossil fuels: hence the large carbon footprint.

Conceived at the Small File Media Festival in 2020, Small-File Ecomedia can offer a solution to the rising carbon footprint of streaming through the creation of low- bandwidth movies of an average of one megabyte per minute. This is only a tiny fraction of high-definition video, which is between 60 and 350 megabytes per minute. The dissemination of small file media requires minimum energy and bandwidth, causing no damage to the planet. Drawing new modes of thinking otherwise in media theory, small-file films raise awareness for environmentally friendly media creation and consumption. While mainstream media is becoming increasingly high-definition, with proportionally higher electricity demands for streaming and storing, small-file films embrace glitchy images and abstract compositions. This lo-fi intervention draws from both do-it-yourself (DiY) movements and computer-based artistic practices. Practitioners can utilize free, cross platform apps including Handbrake, Any Video Converter, and AVIDMUX to compress moving-image content to a fraction of its original size. Some artists use these aesthetic tools to manipulate the granular materiality of digital media objects.

The workshop will cover the motivations and techniques behind small-file filmmaking as well as the basic steps of small-file filmmaking (pre-production, shooting, editing). No need to be intimidated by expensive equipment and fancy software! If you are interested in small-file filmmaking,
you will only need to have a smartphone with a working camera (new, old, recycled, anything really!) and a computer capable of downloading simple video-editing software.

Great cinema doesn’t have to mean great big files!

Please register here.

Mohammad Zaki Rezwan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University. He has over eight years of experience in teaching a diverse range of courses, including visual art and culture, film, media, communication, cultural studies, critical theory, postcolonial theory, and literature in English. He has previously worked as a Research Assistant for research projects at the University of Oxford and Simon Fraser University. He holds an MA in Comparative Media Arts from Simon Fraser University and an MA in Literatures in English and Cultural Studies from Jahangirnagar University. He curated the exhibition Unveiling in 2019 at Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. He previously worked as the Assistant Editor of Crossings: A Journal of English Studies and the Editor of the Comparative Media Arts (CMA) Journal. In 2020, he founded Rickshaw Art Archive (rickshawartarchive.org), a non-commercial, crowdsourced digital archive of rickshaw art in Bangladesh. He has published and presented his research at a wide range of peer-reviewed journals and international conferences around the world. His research interests lie in the areas of South Asian arts, aesthetics, film, media, and visual culture.

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum Auditorium (Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 1/3, 10117 Berlin)  9:30 am – 6:45 pm CET/GMT+1
How do we project and conceive the future? The recent turns of history have been unexpected for many. Contemporary Russia’s gradual transformation from a liberal democratic regime into a conservative tyranny was not inevitable and was not evident in the making. It is therefore striking that in the 2000s and 2010s, some Russian writers accurately anticipated the present turn to war and despotic rule. Novels by Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, and Dmitry Bykov described the future metaphorically but more precisely than “scientific” predictions did.

In the Modes of Futurity conference, co-organized by Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Institute for Global Reconstitution, we are interested in the unbounded social imagination that comes from all genres of arts and sciences, including reaching out beyond academia for creative plotlines designed by writers, with a specific focus on contemporary Russian literature and arts. The conference will discuss the many theoretical and empirical questions arising from this experience: What is the mechanism of literary prophecy? How do we the readers set apart predictions that are most likely to be accurate from the many failed ones? Can there be an element of self-fulfilling prophecy, not necessarily in the anti-utopian novels as such, but in the collective imaginary they rely on? How does the literary imagination relate to the scholarly projects and scenarios produced in the last decades? Can there be an alliance between intellectual projects and fictional writing? Is there a way to use these visions to avert the worst of these unexpected historical turns? Is there currently a space for utopian rather than anti-utopian fiction?

Please register here.

Speakers:
Ilya Kalinin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / IGRec), Mark Lipovetsky (Columbia University), Anastassia de La Fortelle (University of Lausanne), Dmitry Simanovsky (Editor-in-Chief for Überbau), Larissa Muravieva (Smolny Beyond Borders), Michael Marder (The University of the Basque Country / IGRec), Dmitry Bykov (University of Rochester), Alexander Etkind (Central European University), Natalia Grinina (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Artemy Magun (Institute for Global Reconstitution)

Swap Shop (in the P24 yard)  12:00 pm – 5:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The Swap Shop is holding a Mending day/workshop on Friday, March 14th from 12-5 pm! It is a time to repair clothing or items that you’ve been meaning to but haven’t found the time, or/and an opportunity to decorate some items of yours with patches, fabric, and fabric paint. Come at any time between 12-5 for as long as you wish. There will be a few peers there to help when needed, and materials will be provided for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Eliot ([email protected]).

Learning Commons (W16)  12:30 pm – 2:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Hello everyone! I’m hosting a workshop to help you prepare for the midterm, where we’ll review the exercises together. Feel free to bring any questions or problems you’d like to work on. Hope to see you there!
- Mariem Abdennadher

W15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Andrew GottWorth is an advocate for the International OCD Foundation, educator at CODE University of Applied Sciences, and disc golf trainer in Berlin. He will speak about mental health and managing stress in higher ed, and dispel OCD myths.

Organized by Aura Club.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join us for an alumni talk with Erick Moreno Superlano, who graduated from the Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought program with a concentration in Literature and Rhetoric in 2022. 

Erick Moreno Superlano is a PhD student in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. His interests are at the intersection of cultural anthropology, human geography, and social theory. He was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship for his PhD and holds an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, funded by an Oxford Refugee Scholarship and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

For his doctoral research, Erick examines the political structures, socio-economic formations, and racial hierarchies that influence the future of immigrants from the Global South in New York. Specifically, he studies working-class Venezuelan immigrants and analyzes the spatial politics shaping their future in the city. His research aims to uncover how immigrants' future-oriented actions and negotiations in the city impact their moral beliefs, political perspectives, and ability to create political opportunities.

Erick also works as a humanitarian consultant for Meraki Labs where he collaborates with a team of consultants from the Global South and provides research and analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and policy development support to NGOs, international agencies, and research institutions.

This event takes place in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Agata Lisiak's course A Lexicon of Migration.

The Factory (Eichenstraße 43, 13156 Berlin)  7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
A re-imagining of an age-old Belarusian traditional spring celebration into an evening of art and solidarity.

Live music, DJ-set, shadow theater and some ritual performances… as well as a visual art vernissage by an invited Belarusian artist,  Katharina Büttgen.

Dress code: white + red

The collected donations will go to help for Belarusian political prisoners.

BCB Lecture Hall (Platanenstr. 98a, 13156 Berlin)  7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
George Packer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, is one of America's preeminent journalists and essayists. In conversation with Joshua Yaffa, BCB's writer-in-residence, Packer will narrate and expound upon his extensive reporting, carried out over the last decade-plus, from the parts of the United States that may feel mysterious and unknown to European audiences, but carry outsized social and political resonance. He will relay stories of American struggle, ambition, hope, and disappointment from Florida to the Midwest and Arizona, as well as his own home of New York City. Each of these communities, and the people living in them, stand as avatars and guides for understanding larger shifts in the American polity and where the country may be headed. Packer and Yaffa will also address the role and craft of reporting and writing in a context of increasing pressures, whether social or economic.

Please register here.

George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of 10 books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (a winner of the 2013 National Book Award); Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (the winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize); and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Before joining The Atlantic in 2018, he was a staff writer at The New Yorker for 15 years. He writes about American politics and culture and U.S. foreign policy.

Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, National Geographic, and other publications. He is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin and was previously a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin.

W15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Kai B. (BCB class of 2024, HAST Ethics & Politics) has recently returned from an extended stay in the West Bank in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, working as an international volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Over the duration of his time in Palestine, Kai has gathered photographs and stories narrating both his experience as an international volunteer and the realities of life under occupation. He will be sharing these photographs, and their accompanying stories, at 7pm in the W15 cafe. All are welcome to attend, and there will be time for questions following the presentation.

 

Waldstr. 15, W15 Café  7:00 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
You are invited to a presentation of the book Diversity of Exploitation – On the Criticism of the Prevailing Anti-Racism, published in Germany in July 2023 by Dietz Verlag. The English translation will be released in 2025 by Brill Academic Publishers.

In Germany, a liberal concept of racism is advocated by anti-discrimination agencies and the radical left alike. This approach is primarily concerned with representation, inclusion, and diversity. The connection between class and race is rarely addressed. Nevertheless, a critical Marxist tradition of racism research exists. The book Diversity of Exploitation seeks to draw upon this tradition. At the same time, the book offers a political intervention in the current debate on structural and institutional racism, whether in the labor market or the police force. It presents alternatives to liberal antiracism by introducing a Marxist concept of racism in theory and practice.

Bafta Sarbo is a social scientist and educator. She teaches courses on Marx’s Capital and is active in antiracist organizing, among others on the board of the non-profit association Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD), on issues of migration policy and police violence.

To RSVP, please email [email protected].

This event is financially supported by the DFG project 'Self-determination in the Global South.'

Factory  5:30 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Scattered around the world due to Russian aggression, Ukrainians live in a constant state of defense, experiencing war, uncertainty, and exile. In times of crisis, hope is found in community, organizing, and action. Mriï Collective invites you to explore Ukrainian people's agency and together map the networks of resistance during wartime. Join for an exhibition and a panel discussion with leading figures of civil society in Ukraine and in diaspora.

Lecture Hall P98a  7:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect. Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from the chases between the foragers and the nature patrol, to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law. By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction, namely who determines what is made extinct and what gets to live on. 

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of architecture, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorization and conservation and the unruliness of ruination, life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin. 

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series. 

W15 Cafe  5:30 pm – 7:30 pm CET/GMT+1
In this talk, historian Sydney Ramirez will present on the research she conducted into Berlin's lesbian sex cultures of the 1980s and 1990s, published as the Hands Full comic-zine in November 2024.

Learning Commons, W16 top floor  3:00 pm – 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join the Writing Tutors for the Thesis Write-Together session at the Learning Commons!

With the deadlines getting closer, this is a great opportunity to work alongside fellow students, stay focused, and make real progress on your writing. No pressure, just support!

Drop-in hours are from 15:00-19:00: come for as long as you need.

Online (Zoom)  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Around 1600, “innovation” was a dirty word in science, associated with heretics in religion and cranks in medicine. Technology and science were entirely separate fields of endeavor, the one associated with the artisan’s workshop and the other with the university lecture hall. Francis Bacon’s reimagined innovation as a virtue and science and technology as an inseparable pair.

Zoom link
Meeting ID: 868 2090 0663
Passcode: 569424

Prof. Dr. Lorraine Daston is Director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, visiting professor at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, and permanent fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her many books include: Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate (Columbia Global Reports 2023); Rules: A Short History of What We Live By ( Princeton University Press 2022); and Against Nature (MIT Press 2019).

W15 Café  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
BCB Living & Learning Community DerDieDas Haus & Student Life will host a screening of an episode from acclaimed German TV comedy show Die Discounter. We will be joined by cast member Marie Bloching who plays one of the lead characters in the show, now in its fourth season. Marie will talk about the development of the show, the filming process and her work as an actress. The event is in German.

Factory  2:00 pm – 5:15 pm CET/GMT+1
As part of the “Thinking Toward Feminist Futures” event series, this workshop will explore how an intersectional feminist lens—one that is explicitly trans-inclusive—can be practiced and amplified through sound activism and art. Drawing upon oral history methodologies, as well as creative sonic practices, participants will engage with the ways in which feminist and LGBTQI+ movements have historically intersected, conflicted, and evolved. Together, we will investigate how trans-inclusivity enriches feminist praxis and how sound-based art and research can help us imagine and enact more equitable futures.

In examining the interplay of multiple identities and lived realities, we invite participants to explore how truly inclusive, trans-affirming approaches can redefine the future trajectory of feminist activism and scholarship. In addition, our focus on oral histories reveals the interconnectedness of local experiences with broader, global narratives. By hearing the stories and struggles of diverse communities, participants gain a deeper appreciation of how regional contexts both mirror and diverge from wider feminist and LGBTQI+ movements. This approach nurtures a more holistic awareness of the transnational currents of social change, emphasizing that the pursuit of feminist futures is not confined by geographical or cultural boundaries.

Finally, by blending academic inquiry with creative experimentation—most notably through sound activism and art—the workshop embodies the spirit of the experimental humanities. Sound-based methods serve as a powerful conduit for amplifying marginalized voices, translating lived experiences into compelling artistic expressions, and prompting critical dialogue among participants. This synthesis of scholarship, activism, and creative practice underscores the conference’s commitment to innovative, transformative forms of engagement that can inspire and sustain more inclusive feminist futures.

This event takes place in the framework of Francisca Rocha Gonçalves's SC215 Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound) and is open to all BCB students and faculty upon registration. If you wish to participate, please contact her at [email protected].

Kira Gama Rocha is a proud trans woman who bridges the worlds of science, technology, art, and communication to foster innovative and inclusive creative environments. She wears many hats—creative strategist, hackathon expert, educator, mentor, and entrepreneur—all united by her passion for bringing people from different fields together and transforming diverse teams into catalysts of real-world impact. 

Kira’s expertise in multidisciplinary collaborative innovation took shape through her PhD in Digital Media at the prestigious UT Austin|Portugal Program. This experience solidified her commitment to working across disciplines, ensuring that people from different fields can come together to navigate complex challenges and turn bold visions into practical outcomes.

She has helped both private (e.g. REN, ROCHE Portugal) and public organizations (e.g. Regional Government of Azores, Regional Science and Technology Fund, National Innovation Agency, Science and Technology Park of University of Porto) navigate digital projects, often using collaborative hackathon dynamic events to break down and accelerate the creative process.

At the University of Porto and Porto Business School, Kira is devoted to teaching students how to effectively collaborate, communicate, and innovate across diverse fields. She has spearheaded and participated in multiple EU-funded projects, including EUGLOH and CHAMELEONS, where she promotes a learning culture that values participation and the open exchange of ideas.

As a trans woman, Kira brings a deeply inclusive perspective to her work, ensuring that her emphasis on collaboration also embraces the experiences and contributions of all individuals—especially those often overlooked. She believes innovation is most powerful when it emerges from a mash-up of different knowledge systems, lived experiences, and cultural insights.

In the context of the “Thinking Toward Feminist Futures” event series, Kira’s approach is especially relevant. By blending academic rigor with practical, creative strategies, she encourages participants to think beyond traditional boundaries, creating space for underrepresented voices and forging genuine pathways to a more equitable future. Her leadership demonstrates how technology, art, and activism can intersect to build stronger, more resilient communities—and ultimately shape the inclusive feminist landscapes we strive for.

Francisca Rocha Gonçalves is a researcher from Porto, currently living in Berlin. She a background in biological sciences with a degree in Veterinary Medicine from ICBAS (University of Porto), a Multimedia Master in Interactive Music and Sound Design from FEUP (University of Porto), and a PhD in Digital Media from FEUP (University of Porto). Her research focuses on acoustic ecology in artistic creation as a tool for environmental awareness concerning underwater soundscapes. Developing artistic artefacts that reveal the problem of noise pollution in underwater environments makes it possible to understand changes in vibration and particle motion, both vital components in aquatic life. Combining interests in sound, technology, art and science, Francisca's work aims to raise societal and environmental awareness through artistic practices and sound art. A great passion for biology and music led to a demand to find synergies between nature and sound. Bridging these two worlds, Francisca attempts to find new musical approaches, not only for musical compositions but also for live performances. She recently worked on the AQUATAG project at the IGB Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and is currently working for ICARUS, collaborating with Dr Johannes Goessling and James Diamond. ICARUS is an arts-science project that focuses on the photonic properties of diatoms and creates upscaled ice sculptures of their internal shells.

Bard College Berlin campus, various locations  On behalf of the Experimental Humanities Collaborated Network, we are thrilled to invite you, in February 2025, to a series of events including film screenings, workshops, and panel discussions. Curated by Agata Lisiak and supported by Janina Schabig, Thinking Toward Feminist Futures will center the academic interests and creative work of BCB students and guest faculty, featuring contributions from Berlin-based scholars and artists. In addition to spotlighting local thinkers and practitioners, we are also excited to host Jennifer Richter, an Associate Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University.

Events in the series include:
Lunch hour with Professor Jennifer Richter
February 3, 12:30-2 pm, W15

Energy Imaginaries and the Chronopolitics of Possibility, a panel with Jen Richter, Sladja Blažan, Ana Teixeira Pinto
February 4, 7-9:30 pm, followed by a reception, W15 

Feminist Oral History – a two-part workshop with Nayera Abdelrahman Soliman
February 8 & 22, 3-6 pm, K24, Seminar Room 11

Every Body, a film screening and discussion
February 12, 7-9:30 pm, P98a Lecture Hall 

Conversation with the Spectres of the Camp: Thinking Refugee Resistance Through the Lens of the Mass Strike and Convivial Futurity, a lecture by Céline Barry 
February 13, 12:30-2 pm, W15

"Weaving threads from the Margins": Crafting futures through Creative Writing
February 17, 2025, 1:30-4:30 pm, W15

Queer Irreverence (as an antidote to authoritarianism)
February 18, 8:00 pm, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28

The Politics of Blackness and Beauty: Reflective Afro-Futurist & protective haircare workshop
February 21, 4:30 pm, K30 Study Room

Hearing Futures: Sound Activism, Trans Inclusion, and Intersectional Feminism, a lecture and workshop with Francisca Rocha Gonçalves and Kira Gama Rocha 
February 26, 2-5:15 pm, the Factory

Foragers Film Screening and Discussion with Director Jumana Manna 
a film screening and discussion with Jumana Manna 
February 28, 7-9 pm, Lecture Hall 

K30 Study Room  4:30 pm – 7:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Part One, facilitated by Day Eve Komet (1 hour): What does it mean to love ourselves as black people? In this reflective afro-futurist workshop we will explore, reflect and discover how to love ourselves from fragment to fullness. We will creatively explore what it means to love the historical, present and future possibilities of our blackness and how we can lovingly navigate ourselves within oppressive structures.

Part Two, facilitated by Precious Amarachi (1 hour): How do we protect our hair - a source of our beauty and power? With a semi-flexible format, at least basic protective hairstyles such as cornrows will be demonstrated - with time for play, experimenting, practice, and reflection.

Note: This workshop requires registration and is open to communities who have a historical connection to protective hairstyles. This will allow us to plan for the amount of resources needed. Register here.

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series.

W15 Cafe  3:00 pm – 5:00 pm CET/GMT+1
On Friday, February 21st, Bard Berlin will hold the concluding workshop of the program AI Aware Universities: Empowering University Communities for The Ethical Use of AI.

Joanna Bryson, Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School, will deliver a lecture on the ethics of AI use in the university and society more broadly. In the discussion that follows, students and other community members will seek to apply ideas from the lecture to a proposed revision of Bard Berlin’s AI policy.

This series of lectures and student-led discussions aims to create a common playbook for developing a strategy for the ethical use of Generative AI in academic spaces. All members of the BCB community are invited to participate and contribute their input.

In cooperation with the American University of Bulgaria. (See other partners on this page)

W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstrasse 15, 13156)  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
What can and should intellectuals do in times of fundamental transformation, when “monsters” rule and fall, when genocide is rampant but dictatorships surprisingly collapse? We will discuss this question with speaker Yassin al-Haj Saleh.

He will have returned from Syria where he currently spends time to celebrate the liberation from the Assad regime with the Syrian people, to visit the former sites of his political struggle after an 11-year absence, and to support the transformation with all its risks and uncertainties. Recent events in Syria will certainly figure prominently in the conversation; it will also address the issue of Israel's role in the region, and the part the EU can still play in Syria's democratic development.

The conversation will be conducted by BCB’s alum and staff member Hesham Moadami and BCB senior student Ahmad Mustafa. The event will be followed by a reception.

Please register here.

Yassin al-Haj Saleh (born 1961) is the most acclaimed Syrian political writer and dissident of our time. In his youth, he spent 16 years, from 1980 to 1996, in the prisons of the Syrian dictatorship under Hafez al Assad. After Bashar al Assad took over, he became a journalist and author. From 2011 he accompanied, analyzed and explained the sources of the “Arab Spring” in Arabic as well as Western media, and became a central figure in the democratic, human rights-oriented resistance in Syria. Yassin al-Haj Saleh fled to Turkey in 2013 and came to Germany in 2017. Since then, he has written several books: about Syria and the failure of the revolution, about jail and torture, violence and genocide, absence and disappearance, and politics of culture. He now also writes about the Israeli question and the dynamics of Palestinian and Arab (mis)representation in Germany. 

Hesham Moadami, who graduated from BCB in 2021, is currently the Civic Engagement and OSUN Coordination Officer at BCB. He worked as an open-source investigator for the NGO Mnemonic and on the “WhoWasInCommand” Project with Columbia Law School's Security Force Monitor. As a law student in Damascus he participated in the Revolution as a citizen journalist. After fleeing to Jordan he worked for the Shaam Relief Foundation supporting other refugees.

Ahmad Mustafa is a senior student in the HAST program at Bard College Berlin. He is writing his thesis on the Syrian diaspora activities in Germany vis-à-vis the German passport procurement requirement and the Syrian embassy, and he has been documenting the changes since December 8. Inside Syria, he was active in the revolutionary movement, coordinating protests at Aleppo University and working as a citizen journalist with the Assembly of Free Raqqa’s Youth. After ISIS took control of Raqqa, he fled to Turkey, where he began working on refugee support projects before eventually moving to Germany.

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
BCB will award two scholarships for BCB students to participate in the Summer Theater Intensive Program which will take place from May 30 - June 30, 2025 in Berlin. The deadline to apply is March 15.

Theater professors Nina Tecklenburg and Jonathan Rosenberg (Bard College Annandale) will hold a zoom info session about the program and application process on Wednesday, 19th of February 2025 between 12:30-13:30. Zoom link. For students who are seeking to apply, please sign up for the info session by sending an email to [email protected].

Students who are interested in the scholarship should fill out the general program application until the 15th of March 2025. The two BCB scholarships will be granted according to financial need.

This extraordinary program aims to foster creative engagement between students and a wide variety of multidisciplinary artists working in theater and performance in Berlin (amongst others Rimini Protokoll, Gob Squad, She She Pop). The rigorous four-week program explores techniques in the devising and creating of original theater works, and immerses students in the city’s theater and performance culture through regular outings to performances, museums, galleries, and other cultural venues; visits to artistic and historical landmarks; and meetings with artists. The work in the studio is organized around distinct themes such as space, text, composition, body/movement, sound and image. It includes guided rehearsals, regular showings, feedback and a final presentation. The program is run by theater directors Jonathan Rosenberg (Bard College Annandale) and Dawn Akemi Saito (Fordham University + The Juilliard School).

KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin  8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Strategies of irreverence – like the intentional disrespect of imposed authority, the flippant disregard for demands of obedience, the playful breaching of restrictive morality and the conscious embrace of the profane – have a long and rich history within queer art and activism. Not only do these strategies expose power structures and their repressive mechanisms of control that serve to maintain various social-political inequalities, but they are also forms of self-reflexivity – working against the ossification of language by subjecting it to ongoing critique and reinvention.

The films in this program exemplify queer irreverence through performative practices that boldly and inventively intervene in (hetero)normalizing, anthropocentric and authoritarian discourses, fearlessly and flamboyantly reclaiming public space as both a stage and a site of protest. Doors open 8:00 PM, screening 8:30 PM.

Ania Nowak’s To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto) (2020, 15min) is a public speech which dissects the language used by and against queer communities today. Devoid of grammar, the text is subjected to the order and pleasure of rhythm. Commissioned by HAU Hebbel am Ufer in the frame of “Manifestos for Queer Futures”, the performance relies on historic references to militancy by minorities to address the dangers of normativity and the need for embodied intersectionality when forming queer alliances today. By taking liberty to play around with the language of resentment and trauma as well as empathy and healing, it proposes to destabilise identities, practices and well known acronyms like LGB or FtM for the sake of a queer future we have yet to envisage.

Kerstin Honeit’s Panda Moonwalk or Why Meng Meng Walks Backwards (2018, 8min) performs an act of queer interspecies solidarity by calling out the mainstream media’s complicity in projecting sexist and racist stereotypes onto imprisoned pandas. Since 2017 the two Giant Panda Bears Meng Meng and Jiao Qing have been hired out by China to the Berlin Zoo for millions of Euros. Unfortunately for the Zoo this profit seeking attraction did not work out as planned – in fact it worked backwards. Meng Meng, the female Panda will only walk backwards – probably protesting against her imprisonment. Surprisingly the international press takes a different, sexist route and suggests that Meng Meng’s behaviour relates to the fact that she has not yet bred and is seeking attention. Kerstin Honeit’s video aligns Meng Meng’s protest with other performances of protesting bodies using movement in public space to address grievances.

“The film is charming, but it is still labour. The labour to engage in demanding what should already be ours.” With a wink to Jack Smith, the New York underground performer and filmmaker, as well as to the history of queer and feminist calls such as “Wages for Housework!”, Charming for the Revolution (2009, 11min) by Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz recreates the “housewife” as an ambiguous figure with an open future. Additional references extend from Deleuze-Guattari’s becoming-animal, to the 19th century dandy, who out of protest against the clock pulse of industrialisation walked turtles on leashes (as Walther Benjamin described him), or to Pasolini’s ironic capitalism-critical film “The Hawks and the Sparrows”.

No Democracy Here (2018, 25min) by Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is an experimental documentary about political domination. Liad is a leftie human rights defender-dominatrix who re-educates her right-wing slaves about the ethos of leftist values like economic justice and direct democracy using BDSM practices. On election day Liad decides to give her slaves the ultimate political domination session – outdoors and in public, where she teaches them about the pillars of democracy. At the end she forces them to engage in the ultimate political BDSM practice – voting, but only for the ‘correct’ political party, the one reflecting her political beliefs. This film uses BDSM as an allegorical critique of electoral democracy. It explores the meaning of ‘consent’ and ‘free will’, which are frequently used in a BDSM-context, and applies them to the context of electoral democracy and public political processes. The film was shot in 2013 on the streets and in voting polls on election day in Israel.

Queer Irreverence (as an antidote to authoritarianism) is programmed by Angela Anderson as part of the event series Thinking Toward Feminist Futures curated by Agata Lisiak, supported by Janina Schabig, and funded by the Experimental Humanities Collaborated Network.

Ania Nowak approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can and cannot do. Nowak develops formats such as live and video performance, installation and text. In her practice, Ania engages with bodies in their nonlinear feeling and thinking capacity to tackle the difficulties of companionship and care in times of perpetual crisis. Her work attempts to reimagine the notions of disorder, pleasure, disease, intimacy, pain, sexuality, class and accessibility as sites of binary free living. Nowak collaborates with alternative educational programs in Eastern Europe, such as Kem School in Warsaw and the School of Kindness in Sofia. Ania’s works have been presented at Berlinische Galerie, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Akademie der Künste,Sophiensaele, KW, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Nowy Teatr, Warsaw; 14th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius and 12th Gothenburg Biennial, a.o. Nowak recently held solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Galerie Wedding – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin.

Kerstin Honeit works as an artist with experimental documentary moving image formats. Honeit's research-based work deals with the translatability of socio-political issues into resistant aesthetics and counter-narratives. Her focus is on the politics of the (film) voice and in particular on how the voice as a queering event, between the moving images, can shake up prevailing gaze regimes. Honeit's work has been presented internationally in exhibitions and at film festivals, including KINDL, Berlin / Whitechapel Gallery, London / Hammer Museum, LA / CAC, Quito / Fajr International Film Festival, Tehran / n.b.k., Berlin / Off Biennale Cairo / International Short Film Festival São Paulo / MMOMA, Moscow / HKW, Berlin / International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen / Berlinische Galerie, Berlin / Gallery 400, Chicago / BFI London / MCAD, Manila.

Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz have been working together in Berlin since 2007. They produce installations that choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity. Their films capture performances in front of the camera, often starting with a song, a picture, a film or a score from the near past. They upset normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship, as figures and actions across time are staged, layered and re-imagined. Their performers are choreographers, artists and musicians, with whom they are having a long-term conversation about the conditions of performance, the violent history of visibility, the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamour and resistance. Their work has been recently shown at 35th São Paulo Art Biennal, Crystal Palace/Reina Sofia Museum Madrid, Centre Pompidou Paris, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery London, New Museum New York, Coreana Museum of Art Seoul, National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Kunstmuseum Basel, Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin or the 58th Biennale di Venezia (Swiss Pavillon).

Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is a musician, artist, perpetual migrant, queer trash diva, and a master of the margins. Liad lives in Liadland, physically in Berlin, but emotionally located between continents, places she’s lived, and where her heart lies. Liad’s history of political work in Palestine and Europe inspired and informed her artistic work. Her performative methods create space where those considered sexual or political deviants can feel seen. In April 2024 she released under her musical project LIADLAND the album NOTHING TO DECLARE, a reference to her lifetime of being a political activist with a big mouth, and it’s a signifier of crossing borders between nations, between identities, between worlds, and trying to contain all of these realities and transitions within oneself. Focusing on Palestine freedom, sex workers’ rights and queer liberation, she showcased in Europe’s biggest performance festivals: Impustanz/Vienna, City ofWomen/Ljubljana, Sommerfestival/Hamburg, and Berlin’s 10th Biennale. NO DEMOCRACY HERE is the first of her two films.

K24 SR12  7:30 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
EJAAD Berlin and the Bard Feminist Collective presents our first collaborative event of the year: a film screening on menstrual stigma in India. With the screening of Period. End of Sentence, we hope to begin a discussion on menstrual stigma around the world, but particularly in the global south and what we can do the change the discourse that is still present today. Menstruation is nothing to be ashamed of and we hope that this event will be the starting point for a deeper conversation on this topic.

W15 Cafe (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin, Germany)  1:30 pm – 4:30 pm CET/GMT+1
“Weaving threads from the Margins: Crafting futures through artistic creative writing” is an invitation to explore realities, subjectivity, and commitments that matter by reconnecting with the bodies as a source of creative energy, freeing up new pathways for the assertion to take back the power of our own narratives. This workshop will engage participants in in exploring creative writing as a tool for imagining feminist futures drawing from discussions, critical analysis, and hands-on activities that encourage them to consider how different systems of power shape our imaginations of the future by addressing the interconnectedness that can foster sustainable futures.

Please register here.

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series.

Lecture Hall, Platanenstrasse 98a  6:00 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The panel discussion is a public event within the workshop organized by the Invisible University for Ukraine, which will be hosted by BCB on February 15-16. The panel members, Kerry Bystrom (BCB), Valeriia Karpan (University of Coimbra), Aysuda Kölemen (BCB), Joachim von Puttkammer (University of Jena), Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi (WIKO Berlin), and Balázs Trencsényi (CEU) will examine the current conceptual dynamics in East European studies with a focus on Ukraine, while also drawing insights from other contexts.  Could Eastern Europe be regarded as postcolonial? Is the concept of "Eastern Europe" still relevant today? What does the postcolonial perspective reveal about the region? Could the decolonial paradigm help to move beyond the constraints of traditional area studies and promote a transregional approach that transcends the dividing lines of existing mental geographies? The discussion will be moderated by Mariia Krychevska (BCB). The event is co-organized by Mriї Collective

  Online Event 


Bard College Berlin accepts applications for transfer to the BA degree programs in Fall 2025. The deadline for applying is February 15, 2025, at 23:59 in your time zone.

Eligible applicants for transfer are students who have completed at least one semester of university by the time of their expected enrollment at BCB. For more information on eligibility and application requirements, please refer to our application requirements for transfer.

Should you have any questions about your application for admission and/or financial aid at BCB, please do not hesitate to reach out to the BCB Admissions Team at [email protected]. We look forward to receiving your application!

The Factory  7:00 pm – 10:00 pm CET/GMT+1
As part of our Girl on Bike project, the Bard Feminist Collective will organize a fundraiser party this Valentine's Day. We will collect money by selling drinks at the party.

W15  7:00 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
FOCUS is back in the new semester! This time in focus are the recent elections in Eastern Europe and their aftermath. Feel like you're missing some information? Your fellow students are here to fill you in on anything you might have missed and give insight into the internal and regional dynamics in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the far-right. Ina, Tazo, Vasko, Stani, and Hana will speak about their first-hand experiences of elections from Romania, Georgia, Macedonia, and Slovakia. The short presentations will be followed by an open discussion with questions and comments.

SR 8, Platanenstrasse 24, 13156 Berlin  6:30 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Open Classroom allows people to experience university-level courses taught at Bard College Berlin in an informal setting that is open to everyone. It also aims to engage students to share the knowledge gained in the courses they attend as a part of their curriculum. Takes place every Thursday.

Register online here. Walk-ins are also welcome.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Drawing on her current research on the feminist decolonization of borders, Céline Barry will explore the revolutionary practices of the 2012 O-Platz Refugee Strike. To trace anti-capitalist transformational processes, Barry first seeks to understand in what sense the movement represents a specter of Marx (Marx and Engels, 1847) or, in Rosa Luxemburg’s (1906) terms, a wave in the globalized ocean of proletarian struggles: the mass strike.

Barry will engage in a spectral dialogue with Iranian refugee Mohammad Rahsepar, whose suicide in a refugee camp sparked the O-Platz movement. What can we learn from him? As we will see, the reasons Mohammad and his community gave for his death point to the necropolitical dimension of border regimes, which—alongside the direct killings occurring at the external(ized) borders of the EU and the exploitation and precarization they produce—also engender slow death through camp detention. Accordingly, the emancipatory goal of liberation from the camp occupies a central place in the movement Mohammad spearheaded. In this process, new notions of freedom are being generated. In the final part of her talk, Barry will turn to the hopeful futures that activists tested through their political practice. The movement teaches us how care and critical intersectional politics can become foundational for a rehumanizing, convivial (Gilroy, 2009) future.

Presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, as part of the Thinking Toward Feminist Futures event series.

Dr. Céline Barry is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies (ZIFG) at Technische Universität Berlin, where she teaches courses on feminism, race, and intersectionality in postcolonial contexts. Her work is rooted in a commitment to critical social research practices, grounded in everyday life and incorporating creative forms of expression. In her research, Barry focuses on African and Black feminist movements and theories, which she views as essential to decolonization processes. She is also deeply committed to the decolonization of education, collaborating with colleagues to reimagine curricula, transform institutional processes, and foster equitable transnational academic relations. Dr. Barry serves as a board member of both the FG DeKolonial e.V. association for postcolonial, decolonial, and race-critical theory and practice, and the migrant umbrella organization Migrationsrat Berlin e.V.

P98a Lecture Hall  7:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Who are Intersex People? What challenges do we face? What is IGM or Intersex Genital Mutilation? How are Intersex and Queer-Feminist Liberation Linked? What can Intersex Resistance and Joy look like in the face of oppressive regimes?

Join us for a screening of the documentary film Every Body, which follows the Intersex activists River Gallo (they/them), Alicia Roth Weigel (she/they), and Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) as they unpack these questions and more.

This evening intends to create a much needed space to acknowledge and celebrate the intersex community, a largely under- and mis-represented “I” in the LGBTQIA+ community. Following the film there will be the opportunity to share reflections and take part in a student-led discussion.

The film focuses on empowerment and resistance and centers intersex voices and experiences. However, due to the lived realities of many intersex people and the film’s commitment to educate others, the following content notes are advised: Medical Abuse and Trauma, Queer-, Trans- and Inter-phobia, Mental Health challenges and references to suicide. 

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series, and it is co-hosted by BCB’s Equal Opportunity, Participation and Nondiscrimination Office.

W15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Want to learn more about your working rights in Germany as a migrant? Interested in finding out more about what it means to fight for better working conditions and more control over your work? Want to learn more about what it means to build power over the decisions that affect your capacity to care for yourself, your loved ones, and your community?
 Join a Q&A session with Daniel Gutiérrez, union secretary at ver.di, also known as @danielyourunionguy on TikTok. Open to students and highly encouraged for all student-workers.

  5:30 pm – 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Now in its second year, this two-part workshop offers the opportunity to work with renowned journalist Joshua Yaffa on crafting non-fiction prose. Like academic writing, essay-writing for journals and magazines requires precision, evidence, and a sharp argument, but in other ways, the approach to writing is distinct. Participants will have the chance to write, workshop, and revise pieces intended for a broad readership. Both students and faculty are welcome.

Please sign up here.

Session 1 is on Monday, February 10, from 5:30-7:00pm in the Learning Commons.
Session 2 is on Monday, February 17, from 5:30-7:00pm in the Learning Commons.

Kuckhoffstraße 24, Seminar Room 11  3:00 pm – 6:00 pm CET/GMT+1
This two-part workshop takes place on Saturday, 8 February and Saturday, 22 February from 3-6 pm 

If you are interested in documenting stories of ordinary people, if you are interested in writing histories that reflect the voices of those in the margins, if you are interested in writing a reflective feminist history, then you need to learn about oral history theory and methodology.

In this two-part workshop, we will explore both the theory and practice of oral history, with a focus on feminist influences in its development. The first part will center on the theory and methodology of feminist oral history, after which participants will be invited to conduct their own oral history interviews. In the second part of the workshop, we will review participants’ work and explore existing online oral history archives from the North Africa and West Asia region. Toward the end of the workshop, we will reflect on what makes oral history feminist and how it can inform our research, studies, and understanding of how history can be written.

The number of participants is limited, so please apply for the workshop at your earliest convenience (by midnight on 31 January at the latest) using this form. You will be notified if you have been accepted and will receive further instructions for preparation by 3 February. If you have any questions about the event, please email BCB faculty Agata Lisiak at [email protected].

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series. 

Photo credit: private archive

W15 Cafe (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin, Germany)  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
If you have walked the streets of Berlin and Germany recently, you likely noticed the election posters of various political parties campaigning for the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025. Originally scheduled for 28 September 2025, the elections were brought forward due to the collapse of the governing coalition in 2024. Ahead of the election, thousands of people took to the streets in several cities across Germany to protest the rise of far-right extremism and the growing popularity of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

You are invited to join the 2025 German Federal Election info session to learn what is at stake, the political and societal context, and what may be the implications of election results. Reinhard Fischer from Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (Berlin Centre for Civic Education) will visit campus to offer an overview of the electoral system, the democratic setup of the German state, and political decision-making processes, as well as the relationship between the state and the civil society level.

Register via email to: [email protected]

Reinhard Fischer works for the Berliner Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung (Berlin State Agency for Civic Education). It is a state non-partisan educational institution that offers educational events and seminars on promoting democracy, political participation, and education to all Berliners and encourages active contributions to democratic decision-making processes according to people's own interests and abilities.

W15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1
From the eighteenth century onwards, western science began to tap a large, yet non-renewable, capital store of energy. This transition from agricultural production dependent upon the flow of annual cycles (the sun) to industrial production based on the usage and subsequent depletion of energy stocks (fossil fuels) peaked around 1860. The use and abuse of energy continue to directly impact the state of our planet and its life, so, naturally, energy transition and related future technologies are omnipresent topics. What is crucial to these discussions—yet has received far less attention so far—is the question of what kinds of futures energy production should make possible. What often stands in the way of energy imaginaries is the chronopolitics of energy. We “manage,” “kill,” “save,” and “steal” time, which, in most western cultures, is seen as linear. Our massive modern energy systems, with their attendant geopolitics, obscure the cyclical nature of time, which moves in seasons, on currents, and over much longer scales than human life. This panel discussion will frame time differently, exploring the flows of labor, capital, and resources that are constantly in flux around the globe, and examining what has driven these flows in the past and present in order to imagine better futures.

Register here

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series. 

Jen Richter is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University, in Tempe, AZ, USA. She is jointly appointed between the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Social Transformation. Her research lies at the intersection of energy systems, policy, and justice, with specific focus on the nuclear fuel cycle, and informing equitable nuclear waste management for communities. She also works on projects related to direct air capture for carbon emissions in former coal communities, as well as solar energy for Maricopa County, the largest (and hottest!) county in Arizona. Richter has published in Energy Research & Social Science, as well as a co-authored book entitled Environmental Realism: Challenging Solutions, and also co-directs the student activist organization Local to Global Justice.

Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a professor at HBK Braunschweig and a theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute. She is the editor of the book series On the Antipolitical and co-editor of Fascism, Unreason and the Paradox of Modernity, both published by Sternberg Press.

Sladja Blažan received her PhD in North American Literature and Culture from Humboldt University Berlin and her Habilitation in American Studies from University Würzburg. She has taught as a professor for Literature and Media Cultures at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Bard College Berlin/Annandale-on-Hudson, New York University, Free University Berlin, Dutch Art Institute, Humboldt University Berlin and University College Dublin. Research areas include speculative fiction, critical posthumanism, environmental humanities, and critical refugee studies. Her book Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World was published last month with University of Virginia Press. Other publications include the edited collection Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and the Nonhuman, the manuscript American Fictionary: Postsozialistische Migration in der U.S. Amerikanischen Literatur and numerous articles on the intersection of race, gender and class issues.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
The Involvement Fair is your chance to meet the student clubs and organizations and find out how to get involved this semester. Several campus resources will also have tables where you can learn more about the services they offer.

Online (Zoom)  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The Early Modern Science Core cordially invites you to a lecture on Aristotle's natural philosophy by Dr. Giulia Clabassi. Drawing on the Physics (particularly Book VIII) alongside other key works, the lecture will examine Aristotle’s foundational theories on motion and begin a reflection on the broader impact of his ideas.

Zoom link
Meeting ID: 863 0503 7440
Passcode: 928244

Giulia Clabassi holds a PhD in Philosophy from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Philosophy from Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy. Giulia works at the intersection of ancient philosophy and contemporary science, focusing on concepts such as Motion, Time, and Entropy. She has presented her research at Princeton University and Université Paris Sorbonne among others, with forthcoming publications in Dialogoi (Ancient Philosophy Journal). She is currently in the process of publishing her doctoral dissertation.

Online (Zoom)  6:00 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
In this session, we will report on current projects and highlight the urgency of decolonial and postcolonial approaches for achieving a deeper understanding of European traditions. Through brief inputs from philosophy, cultural, and literary studies, we will discuss the constitutive role of colonial violence in the formation of European cultures, as well as how it has been resisted. Additionally, we will reflect on how decolonial and postcolonial critiques provide, on one hand, a precise understanding of structures of violence and power, and on the other hand, open up possibilities for transversal critique and solidarities beyond ethnic identities.

Join via Zoom here.

Curated by Agata Lisiak (Bard College Berlin), Céline Barry (Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung der Technischen Universität Berlin) and Pablo Valdivia Orozco (EUV Frankfurt/Oder).

Part of Postcolonial Critiques – Decolonial Perspectives, a hybrid Lecture Series initiated by AG Postkolonialismus of Allianz für Kritische und Solidarische Wissenschaft and presented by FG DeKolonial e.V.

Katja Diefenbach is Professor of Cultural Philosophy/Philosophies of Culture at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Her main research and teaching areas are contemporary French philosophy and epistemology (with a special focus on the relationship of Marxism and post-structuralism); the reception of contemporary French philosophy in Postcolonial and Gender Studies; Spinoza research as well as the colonial grammar of 17th-century political philosophy. Her publications include Spekulativer Materialismus. Spinoza in der postmarxistischen Philosophie (2018; English translation, 2025) and Encountering Althusser. Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (co-edited with Sara Farris, Gal Kirn, Peter Thomas, 2013). She is a member of the publishing collective b_books in Berlin.

Gal Kirn is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Ljubljana, and currently finishing the research project Protests, Art Practices and Culture of Memory in the Post-Yugoslav Context. He will start to work at European University of Viadrina. He has published two monographs: Partisan Ruptures (Pluto Press, 2019) and Partisan Counter-Archive (De Gruyter, 2020).

Sanja S. Petkovska obtained a PhD degree in Cultural Studies from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and previous academic degrees in Cultural Sociology and Adult Education from the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university. She works at the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research in Belgrade, Serbia, as a Research Fellow and her research revolves around the domains of critical theory, human–animal relations, knowledge production, cultural studies, violence, and public policies. She edited the book Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries (Palgrave, 2024).

Pablo Valdivia Orozco is Senior Lecturer for Literary Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). His main research and teaching areas are Latin American and Western European Literature of the early modern/colonial period and 20th century, critical theory, and the history of modern aesthetics from a decolonial perspective. His publications include Weltenvielfalt: Eine romantheoretische Studie im Ausgang von Gabriel García Márquez, Roberto Bolaño and Sandra Cisneros (2013) and Gegen/Stand der Kritik (2015, co-editor). His latest work proposes a critical reexamination of Petrarch’s Secretum as a foundational text of colonial modernity and its cultural politics. He is a regular visiting professor in Bogotá, Colombia.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
On Monday, 3 February 2025, the BCB chapter of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network is hosting a get-together with Professor Jennifer Richter at W15, starting 12:30 pm.

Bring your own lunch; light snacks will be provided.

Jennifer Richter is an Associate Professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She is also a senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Her research interests are at the intersections of science, environment, and society, and she teaches courses on environmental justice, science and society, and energy policy. She is especially interested in how policies that govern innovations and research are created and then taken up by local populations, specifically in the American West. Professor Richter focuses on energy justice, specifically in relation to the cultural, political, and environmental issues that come with larger energy transitions. Her research has focused on the environmental and social issues related to nuclear waste storage, renewable energy production, and how policies are developed to address issues of production of resources, as well as contamination of land, water, and air.  By examining how science and technology policies collide with local expectations and understandings of environment and politics, Professor Richter explores the different effects of energy technologies and policies, and their effects on society at different scales, from the local to the global.  She is also co-director of a local student activist organization called Local to Global Justice, which brings together local activists with students to organize an annual Forum and Festival to highlight community activism locally and internationally.

In 2023, together with Siarhei Liubimau (European Humanities University, Lithuania) and Agata Lisiak (Bard College Berlin), Professor Richter led the EHCN-funded Generator Project, a multi-sited, multi-campus, and multi-disciplinary seminar on energy justice, culminating in a field school experience in Lithuania. The project was envisioned as a response to the ongoing challenges regarding energy generation and distribution, including the creation of sustainable, resilient, and equitable systems. Read more about Generator here.

This event is presented by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network as part of the Thinking Towards Feminist Futures event series. 

W15 Cafe  6:30 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
In a collaborative event with the Afghan Activist Collective, we seek to shed light on the ongoing Afghanistan crisis and its impacts on Afghans within and beyond the borders. Exploring the realities of life under Taliban rule, this event begins with a comprehensive awareness seminar to better understand Afghanistan's status. Delving into how Taliban governance affects women, access to education, and human rights as a whole. This is followed by a panel discussion of Afghan activists/refugees exploring what it means to be a diaspora activist? Why leave home behind? And at what expense?

Register here

Various Locations  Berlin Weekend is a longstanding BCB tradition, giving our community the opportunity to welcome and get to know our new students and show them what Berlin has to offer. There are a variety of events taking place over the entire weekend. Be sure to sign up!

Complete list of Berlin Weekend events:

Visit NochMall with Civic Engagement
Saturday, February 1, 2025 at 12pm
Meeting Time and Location: Meet Faiza and Hesham at 12pm at Auguste-Viktoria-Allee 99, 13403 Berlin-Reinickendorf
NochMall is the first department store for second-hand goods in Berlin, and it is much more than just a mall. NochMall not only sells and gives and gives a second life to furniture, clothing, electrical appliances, household goods, toys, books and more on over 2,000 square meters, it is also a place to experience the circular economy and waste prevention through different workshops and events. Berliner Stadtreinigung (Berlin Waste Management, BSR), who are responsible for the rubbish produced by the city's two million households, opened this used goods department store in summer 2020, as a measure to promote reuse.

Visit NochMall together with the BCB Civic Engagement team and join the open auction that happens there every first Saturday of the month! You will also learn about how the ideas of circular economy and waste prevention are reflected in on-campus student-run civic engagement initiatives at BCB.
Register here 

Visit to the "Design for Children" exhibit at the Bröhan museum
Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 1pm
Meeting Time and Location: Meet Atticus at Bröhan Museum at 1pm
Join Atticus on a visit to the "Design for Children" exhibit at the Bröhan museum. ‘Design for Children’ brings together examples of furniture, product and graphic design and locates them in their time of origin. In addition to the design of children’s rooms and playgrounds, objects designed for children are also analyzed in terms of their natural or artificial materiality. A separate room dedicated to children’s books not only presents historical examples, but also provides a small library for browsing, looking at and reading. The exhibition is aimed at children and adults alike and contains many interactive elements that can be tried out, played with and sat on. It encourages a change of perspective between young and old and is an invitation to adults interested in design to look at the material world through the eyes of a child (taken from museum website).

BCB will cover the cost of admission.
Please complete this form by 12pm on Friday, January 31st.
Register here

Schwules Museum - The Queer Museum Visit
Sunday, February 2 at 2pm
Meeting time and location: Meet Bernardo at the W15 Cafe at 2pm
The Schwules Museum is one of the most important institutions for Queer experiences in Berlin. Serving as not only a museum but also an archive and general hangout spot that hosts diverse events throughout the year, it is a pretty cool place to get to know the city’s queer scene. The trip includes four exhibitions: “Insights into the life of Eberhardt Brucks”; “Queer Arts from Southeast Asia and its Diaspora”; “Photographs from Annette Frick” and “Queer Movements in Germany since Stonewall”. Hoping to see you there! 

Registration required and is limited to the first 12 sign ups. 
Register here
 

W15 Cafe  6:30 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The Welcome Reception is an opportunity for the BCB community to come together after the first day of classes, welcome our new community members, and reconnect with one another. Join faculty, staff and students to celebrate the start of the semester.

2:15 pm – 3:45 pm CET/GMT+1
In this session with Srila Roy (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) and Serena Owusua Dankwa (University of Basel), we will explore the question of transnational queer and feminist solidarities from a postcolonial angle. Departing from specific contexts in India and Ghana, we will discuss the connections between queer and feminist struggles in the Global South and consider their relationships to diasporic and Western contexts. Our guests will also reflect on the conceptual, epistemic, and methodological approaches they use to make sense of gendered power relations and practices of resistance.

Click Here to Join the Zoom

Srila Roy is a Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand with long-standing interest and expertise is in the field of transnational gender and sexuality studies. She is the author of Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement (Oxford 2012), one of the first books on the gender and sexual politics of Indian Maoism, and Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India (Duke 2022; Distinguished Book Award in the Sexualities category from the American Sociology Association), which maps a rapidly changing terrain of queer and feminist organizing under conditions of neoliberalism and globalization. She is the editor of, among others, New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities (Zed Books 2012). Her research advances debates on postcolonial gender and sexualities, development, neoliberalism and social movements, and centres the Global South in feminist enquiry.
This event is curated by Agata Lisiak (Bard College Berlin), Céline Barry (Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung der Technischen Universität Berlin) and Pablo Valdivia Orozco (EUV Frankfurt/Oder). it is part of Postcolonial Critiques, Decolonial Perspectives: a hybrid lecture series.

Serena Owusua Dankwa is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology. She has worked at the crossroads of academic, activist, and artistic forms of knowledge production, with a particular focus on queer, feminist, and African concepts of gender, friendship and intimacy. Her monograph Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana (Cambridge 2021) is the first full-length ethnography on African women’s same-sex intimacies outside South Africa and received the Ruth Benedict Prize and the Elliot P.Skinner Prize of the American Anthropological Association. She co-edited open access volume Bildung.Macht.Diversität (transcript 2021) as well as the collection Racial Profiling (transcript 2019). Her new research project focuses on safe house intimacies in relation to protection, security, mobility and repression and in the larger context of feminist development and solidarity projects.

  Online Event 


Bard College Berlin accepts applications for entry to our BA degree programs and one-year programs in Fall 2025. The Regular Decision application deadline is January 15, 2025, at 23:59 in your time zone. Students who apply by the Regular Decision deadline can expect to receive their admission and financial aid/scholarship decisions in late March. Applicants from countries outside the EU/EEA and with a visa entry requirement for Germany are strongly encouraged to submit their application no later than the Regular Decision application deadline.

For more information on eligibility and application requirements, please refer here: How to Apply.

Should you have any questions about your application for admission and/or financial aid at BCB, please do not hesitate to reach out to the BCB Admissions Team at [email protected]. We look forward to receiving your application!