Event Archive

Seminar Room 2, Platanenstr. 98, 13156 Berlin  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The authors and editor will present At the Vanishing Point in History and discuss how the ongoing war in Ukraine, along with other global crises, poses challenges for critical research, intellectual life, and society at large.

Putin's war has prompted a deep analysis and reevaluation of the forces driving this deadly confrontation. At the Vanishing Point in History brings together renowned humanities scholars and prominent novelists to explore the roots and causes of the ongoing catastrophe in Eastern Europe. This distinguished group of Russian émigrés, well-versed in Russian culture, history, and philosophy, aims to examine the past to understand the present. Experts in the inner workings of Russian society who have fled the country, they believe it is their responsibility to critically assess the current crisis, reflect on its origins, and outline the agenda for future research in the humanities. In response to this challenge, they present a collection of analytical essays that offer essential background and context for understanding the unfolding events in Europe.

The working language is English. Free entrance, no registration.

Speakers: Marina Bykova (North Carolina State University), Mikhail Mayatsky (Independent Researcher), Olena Pavlova (Humboldt University Berlin/National Technical University of Ukraine Kyiv Polytechnic University), Andrey Oleynikov (Bielefeld University)

John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Lansstr. 7–9, 14195 Berlin, Room 203  9:00 am – 3:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Robert Gooding-Williams (Yale University) will discuss his book Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Du Bois with BCB faculty Ewa Atanassow and Michael Saman taking part as commenters.

To register for the event, please send an email to [email protected]

Spore Initiative, Hermannstraße 86, 12051 Berlin  10:00 am – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The two-day symposium explores the present realities of bulldozer capitalism: where real estate speculation, destruction of land, techno-centric planning, and settler colonialism converge. By tracing these patterns of capital accumulation, the symposium will attempt to reconcile how this extends legacies of colonial domination and economic, spatial control over people, land, and resources of Palestine. Through panels, workshops, and artistic interventions, the symposium offers the space to discuss how the prisms of land, labor, industry, energy, and infrastructure can help us understand the economic architecture of the occupation over the past century, while reflecting on how these logics of economic domination have been resisted and are being reimagined for alternative futures. Organized by Jule Ulbricht and Gale Raj.

View the full program here.

K30 Garden  4:00 pm – 5:00 pm CET/GMT+1
In honor of Berlin Pride Month, let's come together for a BCB Pride Picnic on the lawn behind K30 to celebrate and show your support for the LGBTQIA+ community on our campus, in Berlin, and worldwide. Everyone is welcome! Bring your favorite drink, a snack to share, and a blanket if you'd like. We'll have a fun activity, some chill music, and good vibes.

This event is a safe space dedicated to uplifting a beautiful community. So bring your pride flags and bright smiles. We hope to see you there! 

Three Performances
The Factory (Eichenstraße 43, Berlin 13156)  1:00 pm – 2:30 pm CET/GMT+1
We would like to invite you to the final project showings of the students who have participated in this summer’s theater intensive.

1:00 pm - Performances begin at the Factory. There are three 20-minute pieces with a 5-minute break between pieces.
2:30 pm - Pizza reception at the Cafeteria at Waldstraße 70. Everyone is welcome.
4:00 pm - Feedback session with the students begins at the cafeteria, and again, everyone is welcome to attend.
 
It would be helpful for us to know how many people might attend and how much pizza to order, so if you are interested in coming please RSVP to [email protected].

ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8 10119 Berlin)  7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Ghosts are first and foremost figurations of power. By giving intersubjective communication a form that can challenge anthropocentrism and Western conceptualizations of Nature, ghosts have the ability to generate alternative histories. This renegotiation of past events is particularly important in the context of colonialism. Yet, while this characteristic can certainly be instrumentalized for recuperative purposes, it can also be a narrative tool that supports forms of othering and exclusion. In fact, in literature, film, and culture ghosts can and have been mobilised to perpetuate unjust social structures. Particularly the haunted forest has often served as the matrix through which racial subordination has been put in the service of subject formation. A ghost is a reminder that history is not the past, or as William Faulkner famously put it: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’. But who is reconfiguring the past in the present? This discussion is led by the often-neglected question, who is hosting the ghost? Ghosts may have the ability to expose the narrativity of history, but they do not necessarily function as a corrective. Based on Sladja Blažan’s recent book Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonisation of the Invisible World, the discussion will focus on ways in which settler colonial imaginaries are reproduced and sustained through cultural and personal narratives that centre on spectral land. Particularly forests will be at the centre of attention.

Registration is required and opens here on June 5, 2025

Sladja Blažan is a writer and lecturer at Bard College Berlin. She received her Ph.D. 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 PhilippsUniversity Marburg, Bard College, New York University, Free University Berlin, Dutch Art Institute, Humboldt-Universität zu 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 in 2025 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.

Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, culture writer, and journalist based in Berlin, Germany. Her writing explores how people navigate the complex states of health—especially subjects that discuss contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive assistance, or illness narratives. Her writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, Berliner Zeitung, Esquire, Frieze, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and other publications. A graduate of Princeton University’s Ph.D. program in History of Science, she held awards and fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Camargo Foundation, the Robert Silvers Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Edna Bonhomme is the co-editor (with Alice Spawls) of After Sex (2023), an anthology about reproductive justice, and the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues, which was published in 2025.

Alison Sperling is assistant professor of Literature, Media, and Culture at Florida State University. She has previously held positions as a Junior Faculty Fellow at Technische Universität Dresden (2023), an International Postdoctoral Initiative Fellow (IPODI Fellow) at the Technische Universität Berlin (2020-2022), and a fellow at the ICI Berlin (2018-2020). She works on 20th and 21st century American literature and culture, ecocriticism/the Anthropocene, science fiction and the Weird, queer and feminist theory, Black studies, and contemporary art. She has published and has work forthcoming at the intersection of these fields in Cultural Politics, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature and the Environment, Symplokē, Paradoxa, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Studies in the Fantastic, Girlhood Studies, and in over a dozen edited collections and artist monographs. She is the editor of the journal issue ‘Climate Fictions’ (Paradoxa) and the co-editor of issues on ‘Anthropocene Sublimes’ (Ecozon@) and ‘Weird Geographies’ (Cultural Politics, forthcoming). She is currently serving as co-editor of Science Fiction Film and Television (Liverpool University Press).

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum, Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 1/3, 10117 Berlin   9:00 am – 5:30 pm CET/GMT+1
The era of polycrisis – regardless of what underlies it (environmental threats, the failure in the global security system, world growth of inequality, the undermining of civil society, coming both from authoritarian regimes and from the democratic politics of populism) – requires not only a reaction, taking into account the current challenges of the present time. It needs an anticipatory, projective thinking capable of responding to current problems based on inspiring examples of the past and visionary breakthroughs into the future. Civic activism and educational practices need these symbolic resources as much as contemporary art, political theory, and economic modelling. Perhaps it is the u(dys)topian perspective that will be able to bridge the gap between theory and practice, activism and academia, scientific rationality and poetic imagination, anthropocentrism and planetary habitability.

The search for the ideal society of Plato’s Republic and the Medieval messianic descriptions of paradise on Earth took on new forms during the Renaissance, when in the early 16th century Thomas More coined the neologism utopia – a place that does not exist, or a better place. For a long period, the phrase of Oscar Wilde that “Progress is the realisation of utopias” inspired modernity. However, enthusiasm gave way to disappointment as Svetlana Boym put it “The twentieth century began with a futuristic utopia and ended with nostalgia”. The attempt to realize utopias is inherently hopeless. The literary genre is clearly losing to dystopias. As early as the 1980s, Herbert Marcuse spoke of the end of utopia, and Jürgen Habermas referred to the exhaustion of utopian energies, seeing the decline of the welfare state and the ideal of a laboring society of free and equal producers.

Nevertheless, the interest in searching for ideal forms of collective life, both for local communities and humanity as a whole, has not diminished. Nor has the desire to explode the present, harmonize it, and make it more just, happy, free, prosper and in harmony with nature and future generations. The working language of the conference is English.

View the full program here.

Speakers: 
Sylwia D. Chrostowska, Sladja Blažan, Ilya Kalinin, Stanislav Savitski, Andrew A. Whittington-Biehle, Jan Levchenko, Boris Stepanov, Alexandra Kolesnik, Maria Emanovskaya, Aleksandr Rusanov, Ertuğ Tombuş, Mikhail Minakov, Ali Yalçın Göymen, Maria Ryabova, Philip Fedchin, Yurii Latysh, Silvia von Steinsdorff, Victor Apryshchenko, Andrey Oleynikov, Pavel Kononenko, Veronika Pfeilschifter, Marco P. Vianna Franco, Kseniya Shtalenkova, Danila Raskov, Larissa Muraveva, Marie-Louise James, Garris Rogonyan, Maria Chernysheva, Masha Godovannay, Denis Skopin, Natalia Fedorova, Dmitry Uzlaner, Ilya Utekhin, Georgy Layus, Mikhail Allakhverdov

Organized by: 
The Center for Comparative Research on Democracy (CCRD) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; The Gagarin Center for the Study of Civil Society and Human Rights at Bard College; The U.S. Russia Foundation (USRF), Stiftung Humboldt-Universität

Philharmonie Berlin, Kammermusiksaal (Herbert-von-Karajan-Str. 1, 10785 Berlin)   8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Internationally renowned cellist Gary Hoffman, the Nina and Billy Albert Chair in Cello Studies at Curtis joins some of the school’s esteemed alumni for a tour of Europe in the spring of 2025. A thrilling concert of iconic works and audience favorites, the program features one of Claude Debussy’s final compositions, the Sonata in D minor for Cello and Piano, an elegant, evocative work, at once dark, mysterious, meditative, and playfully whimsical.

Maurice Ravel’s shimmering Piano Trio in A minor follows, a dreamlike work with echoes of jazz, Javanese gamelan, and courtly Baroque dances, all leading to a splashy finale. The concert closes with Gabriel Fauré’s deeply moving Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15, widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated French chamber music works of the late 19th century.

Please register here.

Program:
Debussy: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor
Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor
INTERMISSION
Fauré: Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, op. 15
 
Ensemble:
Alexandra Cooreman, violin
Alyssa Warcup, viola
Gary Hoffman, cello
Serena Wang, piano

Organized by the Curtis Institute of Music in cooperation with Bard College Berlin and Young Euro Classic.

Online (Zoom)  6:00 pm CET/GMT+1
How do journalists use AI under censorship, low resources, and political pressure?
Join us for a 90-minute online session with speakers from Cuba, the Philippines, and Arabic-speaking countries.

Register here.

11:00 am CET/GMT+1
The ceremony will take place on Saturday May 17th at Ballhaus Pankow and will be followed by a reception on campus. By invitation only.

Hertie School, Friedrichstraße 180  7:00 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
The Human Rights Initiative at Bard College Berlin and the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School invite you to:

A conversation with Ken Roth, long-time director of Human Rights Watch, about his new book – Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments – and the state of human rights today.

May 16, 2025  |  7pm – 8:30pm
The Hertie School, Friedrichstraße 180
Reception to follow

Ken Roth is former executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading human rights organisations, which he led from 1993 to 2022. He has extensively investigated human rights abuses around the world, focusing especially on the world’s most dire situations, the pursuit of international justice, the major powers’ foreign policies, the work of the UN, and the global contexts between democracy and autocracy. Roth is currently a visiting professor at Princeton University and member of the Board of Governors at Bard College Berlin. 

His recently published book, Righting Wrongs, combines memoir and analysis to refute the skeptics who question whether it is possible to defend human rights effectively. Roth pulls back the curtain on the strategies and tactics that Human Rights Watch and its allies employed to force governments, armed groups and companies to behave better.

At a time of global instability, rising extremism, and threats to human rights, Roth explains how it is possible to move even the most powerful and despotic governments.

Please register here. 

Online (Zoom)  5:00 pm – 6:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Wagner will present as part of Bucerius Institute Lecture Series at the University of Haifa on "Modernity's 'Others': Plurality and Counter-Hegemonic Perspectives in 20th-Century German-Language Literature."

In “Doing Things with Words,” Wagner will examine how Margaret Fuller, Germaine de Staël and Friedrich Nietzsche engage with the methods and practices of philology to redefine the role of the humanities in the public sphere. She will discuss their attempts to integrate scholarship into social life, demonstrating how humanistic inquiry can be used as a tool for cultural transformation, education, and social critique — ideas that remain highly relevant to the humanities today.

Zoom link

Floating Berlin (Lilienthalstraße 32, 10965 Berlin)  3:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
The Research Creation Class of 2025 is throwing open the doors for our annual exhibition event. Students have, during a semester of conducting individual research and creating artistic responses, engaged closely with archives – personal, grassroots, institutional, digital or state-held. They discovered traces of lives, events, and movements, and learnt that revisiting history is never the same as experiencing it – it is traced over and over until the lines are smudged, and stories, especially those of resistance, are lost, diluted, or erased. The geographies in their art works reach from Kaliningrad/Königsberg to India, from Nazi Berlin to Palestine, from the island of Vieques to France. The stories that they tell span the entire 20th Century.

Please register here.

At 3:30pm there will be an exhibition tour

At 5:00pm, we will listen to Eyal Weizman's lecture: “The longue durée of genocide”:
Weizman uses spatial methodologies and the archives of the landscape to show historical continuities and the protracted nature of genocide in and around Wadi Gaza - the fertile seasonal stream bed extending between Hebron and Gaza City. It was inhabited by Palestine’s southern most agricultural communities who were violently displaced in the Nakba 1948. After October 7 the Israeli army designated Wadi Gaza as the border between the northern and the southern parts of the Gaza Strip, north of it was a forbidden area where no Palestinians were allowed, and south of it a so-called "humanitarian zone”, which was also starved and bombed. In the eyes of Zionists’ predecessors, the 19c orientalist German, British, French and American travellers to Ottoman Palestine, south of Wadi Gaza started the desert, where settled life is seemingly impossible. Weizman relates the history of Wadi Gaza to Art. II c of the Genocide Convention, that defines “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction” as one mode that genocide can operate with.
Teresa Koloma Beck will respond to the lecture; the discussion will be moderated by Kerry Bystrom.

From 7:00pm, Omar Haidari and Jamal Momand will raise awareness for women in Afghanistan and serve their famous Afghan Burgers.

The event ends at 9pm.

Program:
3pm: Doors open
3.30pm: Welcome and Exhibition Tour
5pm: Lecture by Eyal Weizman; respondent: Teresa Koloma Beck; moderator: Kerry Bystrom
7pm: Afghan Burgers and Party
 

  Meeting point: In front of W15  7:00 am – 10:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join us to do the traditional Ostsee trip, the 2nd weekend of May during which we will celebrate the end of the year on the coast of the Baltic sea!

As in previous years, we chartered a bus and reserved rooms in the youth hostel of Heringsdorf.

Heringsdorf is one of the most well-known and popular beach resorts along the coast. It is located in the vicinity of the German-Polish border thus offering the option for a pleasant bike tour to the neighboring country. 

If you wish to join this trip, you will have to pay a 45 EUR contribution by the last day of April.  

Register here. Please note that there are limited places available: first come, first served.

Waldstraße 15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join us for an inspiring evening with Bushra Mahnoor, the visionary behind Mahwari Justice—a grassroots movement combating period poverty in Pakistan. From distributing dignity kits in flood-stricken areas to challenging menstrual taboos through comics and rap, Bushra’s innovative activism has empowered over 150,000 menstruators. Recognised with the 2024 Diana Award, she continues to lead efforts for menstrual equity and dignity. Discover how Mahwari Justice is transforming crisis response and sparking global conversations on reproductive health.​

Please RSVP here.

Monopol (Provinzstraße 44, 13409) & Ackerstraße 168, 10115  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
We warmly invite you to the opening of the exhibition (Dis)organizing Otherwise: Counter-Public Spheres on May 9, from 6–9 PM at the Fire Station, Monopol Berlin.

With contributions by: Alessandra Pomarico, BCB Mutual Aid Fund, Carmen Gheorghe, Club der polnischen Versager*innen, Elan J Cohen, Elisa R. Linn, Emel Aflak, Emma Safran Lachnit, Fin Polon, Fiona Ahrens, Flora Klein, Free Home University, Jenni Tischer, Julia Scher, Katya Mastyukova, Living Room Collective (Pohan Chiu, Jakob Karpus, Ruxin Liu, Julia Stang), MÄDEA, Margot Carter Megalli, Mirna Bamieh, Nikolay Oleynikov, Ritta Hamida, Sanskriti Shrestha, Silvia Mamporia, Tiphanie Kim Mall

May 9, 2025, 7 PM
Curating Otherwise: Affective Chronicles from Free Home University’s Radical Experiment in Art, Pedagogy, and Struggle, Conversation with Alessandra Pomarico and Nikolay Oleynikov (Free Home University), Fire Station at Monopol Berlin

May 10, 2025, 4 PM
Collective Consciousness: Sound healing meditation session by Sanskriti Shrestha, Fire Station at Monopol Berlin

May 15, 2025, 8 PM
Curated Film Screening, Club der Polnischen Versager*innen, Ackerstraße 168, 10115 Berlin

The exhibition runs from May 9–11, 2025, and marks the final project of the course Spaces of Appearance: Exhibitions as Counter-Public Spheres, led by Elisa R. Linn.

Monopol (Provinzstrasse 44, 13409)  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
BCB’s celebrated end-of-the-semester arts tradition returns: Open Studios & Performance Factory. All are welcome to this 2-night event on the evenings of May 7th and 9th as visual and performing arts students showcase their work.

Day Two at Monopol on May 9th includes a variety of mediums such as painting, sculpture, glass, and more. There will be a glass blowing demonstration as well as a cave rave that you cannot miss! 

Featuring:
Beginning Sculpture
Marble Stone Sculpture
Introduction to Glass Making
Painting and Beyond
Advanced Painting: Illusionistic Surfaces
Found Fragments and Layered Lines: Mixed-Media Techniques for Drawing and Collage
Reflecting Human-Environment Relations (Through Sound)
Spaces of Appearance: Exhibitions as Counter-Public Spheres
Dance it Out! Freedom Tactics & Channeling on Film

Day One at the Factory on May 7th includes a variety of mediums such as ceramics, photo, video, virtual reality, and an exciting program of performances of all kinds.

W16 Learning Commons  7:00 pm – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
"Abendbrot" is an informal social gathering for all students interested in speaking German. Meetings take place bi-weekly at 7pm in the Learning Commons. 

Lecture Hall (Platanenstr. 98a, 13156 Berlin)  2:00 pm – 7:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Please join us for the expert and student conference "Opportunities and Challenges for Protecting Children's Rights" which takes place as part of the Open Society University Network Collaborative Course "Children's Rights."  This conference will draw attention to a set of pressing contemporary abuses of children’s rights globally including physical attacks on children during wartime and occupation, child labor, domestic abuse, lack of access to healthcare, and denial of asylum rights. In resonance with the 99th session of reporting to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) set to begin in Geneva on May 12th, student research groups from the Bard College Berlin, Bard College, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences and the American University of Central Asia will be presenting NGO-style advocacy reports aimed at informing CRC Committee questions to States Parties. There will also be presentations from professors from the partner campuses, local human rights practitioners and researchers in related fields.

On May 7 student presentations will take place from 14:00-16:00 in the JJK Café; and on May 8 student presentations will take place from 14:00-16:30 in the Lecture Hall. 

Additional events on May 8 include:
11:00-12:00 Presentation and discussion on children’s right to health and combating polio by Prof. Helen Epstein (Bard)

12:30-13:30: Civic Engagement lunch presentation “Play!Berlin, from Emergency Response to Sustainable Local Activism” 

16:30-18:30 Keynote panel “Protecting Children’s Rights: From International Criminal Law to Literature.” This panel will explore the way in which international criminal law–with a focus on the International Criminal Court–has developed and its capacities to protect children’s rights in particular, at the same time exploring gaps in this protective capacity that need to be filled through other forms of political communication and imaginative storytelling. Prof. Dr. Kerry Bystrom (BCB) will moderate a discussion with Ms. Maryna Hovorukhina, Dr. Jana Lozanoska (Al Quds Bard), Prof. Dr. Peter Schneck (Osnabrück University) and Dr. Laura Zander (Osnabrück University). The panel will followed by a reception 
.
While this conference was not conceived in connection to the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, events on May 8th will begin with a moment of silence to honor the victims–including the many child victims–of Nazi crimes. 

Members of the BCB community are welcome to attend all listed events. The Keynote panel is additionally open to external guests by pre-registration. In order to ensure proper catering for the Keynote panel reception, all attendees should please register here by Tuesday, May 6th.

Questions can be addressed to the event organizer, Prof. Dr. Kerry Bystrom.

Meet at W15 (JJKH)  11:00 am – 3:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join your RAs and BCB Go Green for a fun, relaxing, end-of-the-semester lake trip to nearby Flughafensee. We will depart from Julie Johnson Kidd Hall at 11am on Thursday morning and spend the holiday enjoying the nature here in Berlin! Everyone is welcome and we look forward to seeing you there!

The Factory (Eichenstrasse 43, 13156)  5:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
BCB’s celebrated end-of-the-semester arts tradition returns: Open Studios & Performance Factory. All are welcome to this 2-night event on the evenings of May 7th and 9th as visual and performing arts students showcase their work.

Day One at the Factory on May 7th includes a variety of mediums such as ceramics, photo, video, virtual reality, and an exciting program of performances of all kinds.

Featuring:
Ceramics
Introduction to the Art of Porcelain-Making
Beginners Black and White Photography Class: The Slow Photo
The Photo Zine: A Subversive Phenomenon
Introduction of Digital Photography - Identity, Construction, Representation
Finding the Stories
Chronicle of a Season - Documentary Filmmaking
The Art of Making Videos
Virtual Reality Showcase
Adapting Novels for the Stage: Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Curtain up: Theater in Berlin

Day Two at Monopol on May 9th also includes a variety of mediums such as painting, sculpture, glass, and more. There will be a glass blowing demonstration as well as a cave rave that you cannot miss! 

Waldstraße 15 Cafe  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
BCB has a living and learning community with a special focus on German language and culture: the “DerDieDas Haus”. Students with an interest in exploring German in their daily lives share a designated floor in one of our residence halls. They use German amongst each other during the week and engage in extracurricular activities in the city. To find out more about how the projects works, how to apply for a place etc., please join us on Tuesday, May 6, at 7:30pm in the Café at Julie Johnson Kidd Hall, Waldstraße 15. Members of “DerDieDas Haus” and the BCB German Program will host an “Offenes Haus” with snacks and drinks.

  W15 Cafe  5:30 pm – 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Kick off completion week with a dinner of breakfast! Student Life Staff will be here to serve you stacks of pancakes, fruit, and beverages.

  W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
As Syria faces the challenge of moving beyond conflict, transitional justice offers a framework to confront past violations and rebuild trust in public institutions. This event will explore the prospects for national reconciliation and sustainable peace in war-torn Syria. All students, faculty, and guests are warmly invited to join this conversation.

Dr. Usahma Felix Darrah studied Political Science, International Iaw and Islamic Studies in Damascus and Heidelberg before working as a lecturer and speech writer for 10 years. He’s been the managing director of “Freunde des syrischen Volks e.V.” and a political consultant in Berlin since 2014.

“Freunde des Syrischen Volks e.V.” is a non-profit organization founded in Berlin in 2014. We engage in projects that empower Syrian communities and give them agency in the field of legal development and push towards accountability for core crimes committed during the Syrian conflict.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 3:30 pm CET/GMT+1
FEELING STRESSED? OVERWHELMED? You are not alone. Join us for a workshop centered around mental health, community, and neurodiversity. Explore how we might, as neurodiverse individuals and allies, navigate moments of stress and overwhelm with more connection, resilience, and care. Through 3D modeling and conversation, we'll explore the emotions and pressures students face and share our experiences. Moreover, this event aims to kick off the conversation on mental health and neurodiversity at BCB, and through reflection on the current offered resources, we want to explore how the university will be able to better support students. Come as you are—this is a space for care, connection, and catharsis. Let’s create change together, starting with a moment to breathe, reflect, and be heard. The event will be conducted by Social Worker and Facilitator, Madeline Taylor ([email protected])

Please register here.

Speaker bio:
Hello! My name is Madeline Taylor and I have recently begun my own freelance facilitation practice aimed at supporting nonprofits, grassroots groups, activist groups and social justice related projects in building stronger internal systems, having deeper conversations, and navigating moments of change with more clarity and care. As a process facilitator, I aim to support groups by providing interactive and collaborative methods to explore a variety of topics and creating a safer container in which groups can explore and grow.

  Wein Salon, Schreinerstr. 59, 10247, Berlin  8:00 pm – 10:30 pm CET/GMT+1
It is now a well-loved tradition that the writers in Clare Wigfall's fiction writing workshops give a much-anticipated reading of their work as the finale of their course. Once again, we are returning to the charming Wein Salon in Friedrichshain. Please join us for a cozy and intimate (but also perhaps a little bit riotous, let's be frank) evening of beautiful and surprising stories and words written by Clare's students. All BCB students, alumni, friends, and faculty members are warmly welcome.

Writers presenting: Jesse Biviano, Ina Constantin, Mala Emde, Gabrielle Gosnell, Marley Heltai, Eliška Pastieriková, Sarah Lo Vecchio, Mya Mackiewicz, Nicole Sierra, Stanislava Švekušová

Filmtheater am Friedrichshain (Bötzowstrasse 1-5, 10407 Berlin)  8:00 pm – 11:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Bard College Berlin is cohosting a public screening of The Master and Margarita, a successful adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel that faced intense scrutiny and attack when it was released in Russia last year. Duma deputies and pro-war Russian propagandists called for its ban and demanded criminal charges against Michael Lockshin, its Russian-American director, who staked out a clear anti-war position from the moment of Russia's invasion. State loyalists in Russia were displeased by Lockshin's own public stance and the embedded messages of the film, an allegory for the dangers of squelching artistic and personal freedoms.

Despite (or maybe, even helped by) these attacks, the film’s reception among Russian audiences was overwhelmingly positive. Over 6 million tickets have been sold in Russia, without virtually any media support initially for the release. The film was in the top-8 highest grossing films in Russia ever, even though rated-R. This success also demonstrates the enduring appeal of Bulgakov’s text, with its blending of historical context with contemporary relevance. The novel, as Lockshin’s film makes clear, is an open critique of authoritarianism, censorship, terror, and other means by which the State wields power over its citizens.

Lockshin will be present at the screening and take part in a Q&A moderated by Joshua Yaffa, the writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin, and who has covered Russia for The New Yorker for many years. The film will be screened in Russian with English subtitles.

Tickets can be purchased on the Yorck Kinogruppe website. 

  Application deadline for citizens and residents of EU/EEA and Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, UK, US
Online Event 


Bard College Berlin accepts applications for entry to the BA degree programs and one-year programs in Fall 2025. The final deadline for applying is May 1, 2025 at 23:59 in your time zone.

Eligible applicants are citizens and residents of the EU and EEA, as well as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, UK, US. For more information on eligibility and application requirements, please refer to 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!

P98a Lecture Hall  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
We all have climate anxiety, but do we make music about it? This FOCUS will be a listening party for a concept album created by student Thijs Veldhuis. The album is about Thijs' future great-grandson Cyros, who travels back in time to reverse the most severe consequences of climate change. It will consist of ten songs that together form one story. Join to find out more about climate change, listen, and discuss!

Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin  6:40 pm CET/GMT+1
You are warmly invited to celebrate with the entire BCB community the dedication of Waldstraße 15 as Julie Johnson Kidd Hall.

There will be a reception with drinks and hors d'œuvres, a joint student, alumni and faculty discussion on the liberal arts, and an address by our honoree, Julie Johnson Kidd. 

6:40 pm:
Drinks and hors d'œuvres.

7:00 pm: 
Panel Discussion: “Why do the Liberal Arts matter today?”
Speakers: Miyu Sasaki ‘25, Muhammad Faraz Sadiq ‘25, Aya Ibrahim ‘15, Nassim Abi Ghanem and Geoff Lehman; Moderated by Kerry Bystrom.
Remarks from Julie Johnson Kidd (President, Endeavor Foundation), presented by Ashley Kidd (Vice President and Director of Programs, Endeavor Foundation)

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 2:00 pm CET/GMT+1
This presentation tracks the ways images of violence in Palestine have circulated and functioned over the past year and a half. Examining photographs (including images from previous decades), evidence of war crimes, and the visual techniques of villainization, Adam Broomberg and Ido Nahari '19 (BCB HAST alum) will address how these images both define the moral limits of violence and play an integral role in its enactment. Like modern warfare’s autonomous weaponry, its documentation also distances brutal cause from devastating effect. Vital to this discussion is the visibility of affliction—the war-torn bodies of damageable Arab victims vs. seemingly invulnerable Israeli soldiers—and how such optics sanctify certain forms of life while devaluing others wholesale.

Please note that the visuals that will be presented are distressing and graphic. We do not intend to inflict further harm, but to look at them with critical understanding together.

Adam Broomberg is an artist, activist and educator. His work is currently exhibited at the Venice Biennale. His activist work includes having founded Artists + Allies x Hebron (AHH), an NGO which he co-directs alongside the celebrated Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro. For two decades, he was one half of the critically acclaimed artist duo Broomberg & Chanarin.

Ido Nahari is a writer and researcher, currently pursuing his doctorate in sociology at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. Previously the editor for the street newspaper Arts of the Working Class, his writing has been published in various newspapers and magazines, and he has taught in the United States and Europe. Ido is a BCB alum.

Online  12:30 pm – 1:30 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.

Part of Life After BCB series

W15 Cafe and The Factory  10:00 am – 8:00 pm CET/GMT+1
How do we make sense of space, memory, and displacement in the shifting landscapes of Europe’s East? Join MRII COLLECTIVE for a dynamic, day-long conference that brings together academic voices, emerging researchers, artists, and activists. Together, we will reflect on the politics of space and memory, forced migration, ecology, and (non)belonging in post-Soviet urbanity.

The program includes: Academic panels Expert lectures Student research presentations Short film screeningsThis event creates a space for dialogue between Ukraine, Slovakia, Belarus, and Germany — across disciplines and borders

View the full program PDF here.

Mosaic artwork on the poster by Mariia Kurochka

W16 Garden  4:00 pm – 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1
ResLife and the RAs will host The Great Cultural Mashup - Global Gathering on April 25 to celebrate the many different cultures that enrich our community here at BCB. The event is planned as a vibrant gathering in the garden behind W16 and will include food and drink sharing, trading, or selling (from one's own culture or a culture one is interested in), games from different cultures, as well as performances such as dancing, singing, and more — representing either one's own culture or one the person is passionate about.

If you would like to participate, please fill out the Google Form (either every section or only the ones relevant to you). Feel free to reach out to ResLife if you have any questions. Let’s come together to celebrate the many cultures represented at BCB, which make our community beautiful and strong, and to highlight their importance!

Monopol Fire Station ("The Garage") - Provinzstr. 40-41, 13409 Berlin  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
We cordially invite you to the public exhibition of art works from this year’s graduating cohort. The exhibition shows the outcomes of a two semester long creative research that students conducted as part of their senior thesis projects. Please join us to see their final works and celebrate this special occasion!

The exhibition will include works by: Aria Hadziosmanovic, Faye Dudukovich, Yasmine El Hafidi, Meredith Lynch, Zykkii Cubukcuoglu, Misi Hoogvliets, Kakazi Kacyira, Robin Schubert, Lex Hill, Zofia Polak, Celeste Lucci, Ritta Hamida, Abdullah Naseer, Simone Kyle, Evangelia Dalton, Annika Julien, Luna Miccoli, Isa Thulin.

W15 Cafe  3:45 pm – 5:15 pm CET/GMT+1
This guest lecture in EC322: Geographies of Global Capitalism addresses the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and Marxist debates about rights and capitalism. 

In the first stage, it maps the emergence of the ‘universality paradigm,’ which asserts that the Haitian Revolution belongs to our own political and social reality by having played a central role in the genesis of universal human rights through its unmatched abolition of the primary example of particularism – the institution of slavery. In the second stage, it turns to a recent trend of ‘skeptical responses’ to the universality paradigm, focused on authoritarianism and inequality, which assert that the Haitian Revolution is irrelevant for present-day issues. In the third stage, it builds on Marxist debates about the relation between capitalism and rights to provide a critique of both the supporters and detractors of the universality paradigm. The lecture ends in an explication and defense of the idea that the Haitian Revolution belongs to our own age by virtue of its relation to rights and capitalism, although this connection also represents the limits of the Haitian Revolution.

Carl Wilén is a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University/Université Paris Nanterre.

W15 Cafe  2:00 pm – 3:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Literary translator and publisher Katy Derbyshire returns to the BCB campus to reflect on her professional trajectory, discuss what her jobs entail, address new challenges posed to her profession by AI and public funding cuts alike, and share lessons from her life as a freelancer in Berlin.

This event is part of IS331 Berlin Internship Seminar taught by Agata Lisiak and Florian Duijsens.

Katy Derbyshire comes from London and has lived in Berlin for almost 30 years. She earns her living translating contemporary German literature into English, and also heads the small publishing imprint V&Q Books. Katy is co-founder and co-host of the Dead Ladies Show. She has taught literary translation in New York, New Delhi and Norwich, among other places.

W15 Cafe  10:30 am – 12:00 pm CET/GMT+1
FA188 welcomes BCB faculty and students to join us between 10:30am-12pm for a presentation by media artist Chan Sook Choi, followed by group discussion. The research-based work of Chan Sook Choi addresses questions of land and ownership, the things people leave behind in areas once settled, and various forms of migration. Her recent videos have investigated demilitarized zones, as well as copper mines & interstellar matter. Choi works in a variety of media, including performance, photography, installation, and video.

In the work of Chan Sook Choi, experiments with narratology that relate to physical and spiritual migration are represented in multidisciplinary forms including exhibitions, lectures, performances, and publications. Choi confronts and assembles the different fragments that arise through migration, creating new locality and fluid topographies rather than fixed realities. She has held solo exhibitions at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2017); and the Taipei Digital Art Center (2010). Her work has been presented at events including a National Theater of Korea national brand performance in Seoul and the festival Ars Electronica, and in settings such as the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. She has also earned selection to the Seoul Museum of Art’s emerging artist support program (2017), and a visual art support prize from Germany’s Stiftung Kunstfond (2021). In 2021, she received the Korea Artist Prize, awarded by the MMCA and the SBS Culture Foundation.

Multiple Locations  This semester's Senior Thesis Presentations are taking place from April 22 to May 9. The presentations are an essential step towards graduation for every senior, and they are an established and cherished event in the BCB academic year. 

Tuesday, April 22 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR1
Evangelia Dalton, "A Form of Perpetual Relation: Water and The Feminine in the works of Ana Mendieta, Roni Horn, and Pipilotti Rist"

Tuesday, April 22 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Miyu Sasaki, "The Ominous in the Mundane: the Entrapment of Daily Life in Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park"

Tuesday, April 22 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR1
Aria Hadziosmanovic, "Do you feel what I feel: from God to Emo"

Tuesday, April 22 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, P98 SR1
Clara Lieber, "The Fifth in the Tetrad: The Digital Age, The Artist, The Storyteller, and The Innocent through The Spongebob SquarePants Movie (2004)"

Wednesday, April 23 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Vasko Popchevaliev, "European Union Enlargement Policy: Analyzing the Case of Macedonia"

Wednesday, April 23 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR8
Claudia Schlomer, "The American Cowboy Hero: An Exploration of Regenerative Violence in The Myth of the Frontier"

Wednesday, April 23 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR11
Zofia Polak, "Resistance and Community-Building Through Textile Art in Contemporary Poland"

Wednesday, April 23 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Sabrina Pierce, "Civil Disobedience in Time and Space: Carnival as a Form of Global Dissent"

Wednesday, April 23 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Lex Hill, "Trans-ing Bodies, Ink-ing Relations: Transness, Tattoos, & Collaborative Reflections on Collective Body-Making"

Wednesday, April 23 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, W15 Cafe
Gabi Cangussu Dos Santos, "Recent Changes in Brazilian Soy Exports and Associated Deforestation: Lessons for Future Policy Implementation"

Wednesday, April 23 | 2:00-2:30pm, W15 Cafe
Charles Hamilton, "Eco-Economics: Advanced Bahamian Global Leadership in the Blue Economy through Carbon Trading and Concomitant Innovation"

Thursday, April 24 | 11:00am-11:30am, W15 Cafe
Misi Hoogvliets, "Dream Wild, Child: Envisioning New Representations in Film Through the Use of Queer Afrosurrealism and the Black Radical Imagination"

Thursday, April 24 | 11:45am-12:15pm, W15 Cafe
Robin Schubert, "Archiving: Methodologies of Resistance"

Tuesday, April 29 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR1
Theresa Steinbeis, "The Disguise of the Beggar in the Odyssey"

Thursday, April 24 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, W15 Cafe
Marton McCue, "Whose Tablet Is It Anyway? The Politicization and The Plundering of Iraqi Cultural Heritage in The Context of The Second Gulf War"

Thursday, April 24 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Elena Chiavazza Prieto, "Erotic Resistance against Augusto Pinochet's Dictatorship: Queer Mythification and Re-narration of Chile in Pedro Lemebel's Tengo Miedo Torero"

Thursday, April 24 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P24 SR8
Dayana Milieva, "Can Life Still Be Sweet Without Sugar? Psychosocial, Ethical, and Financial Considerations in Government Assistance for Children With Type 1 Diabetes"

Thursday, April 24 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR2
Mishel Jovanovska, "The Possibility of Forgiveness (and its Threat) in Hobbes's Leviathan"

Friday, April 25 | 11:45am-12:15pm, K24 SR11
Annika Julien, "When Children Love Ugly Animals: An Evaluation of Depictions of Non Charismatic Species in Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Children’s Literature as an Approach to Nature Conservation"

Friday, April 25 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Cosma Bolis, "A New Renaissance in Italy: The Legacy and Prospects of Atomic Energy"

Friday, April 25 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR11
Rowdy Kram, "From Navigators of the Stars to Navigators of Their Own Sovereignty: Māori Mana in Dialogue with Cherokee Duyuktv"

Friday, April 25 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Doaa Althawr, "Local mediation: Exploring the role of Yemeni tribes in conflict resolution"

Friday, April 25 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Tazo Shavgulidze, "Is organic farming economically feasible on a large scale, and if so, what policy tools could support this transition?"

Monday, April 28 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, Lecture Hall
Ritta Hamida, "Dalouna's Dabke Relatives across time and boarders"

Monday, April 28 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Celeste Lucci, "Re-imagining Space: Architecture Photography Today"

Monday, April 28 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR2
Zykkii Cubukcuoglu, "Cyborg Mythologies; Social and Political Imaginaries within Cyberpunk"

Monday, April 28 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR2
Meredith Lynch, "it pretty much feels like heaven: extremity, exploitation, & digital spectres in Toad Road (2012)"

Tuesday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR11
Luna Miccoli, "Bridging Identity and Materiality: Mark Bradford's transformation of Painting using Collage and Decollage"

Tuesday, April 29 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Simone Rae Kyle, "Book Relations: The Book Object's Formal Capacity for Agency and Exchange in Walter Benjamin and Beyond"

Tuesday, April 29 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR2
Max Suvorov, “'On the Ways to Liberty': Lessons from the Unsuccessful Attempt of Russian Liberals to Lead the Revolution in the Memoirs of Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams"

Wednesday, April 30 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR11
Hanene Bergaoui, "Privatization and Employment: Analyzing the IMF and State-Owned Enterprise Reforms in African Economies"

Wednesday, April 30 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Maya Calleja Scott, "Canadian Labour: A History of Dispossession and its Impacts on Transnational Union Organizing"

Wednesday, April 30 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, W15 Cafe
Yelyzaveta Sokolova, "Caring in Displacement: Ukrainian Mothers in Berlin"

Wednesday, April 30 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, W15 Cafe
Gali Har-Gil, "The Political Trigger Points of Theater: Challenging Collective Memory on Stage"

Wednesday, April 30 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, W15 Cafe
Muhammad Sadiq, "Teachers Matter: Measuring Teacher Quality and Implications for Policy in Pakistan"

Friday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Athina Manou, "Environmental Attitudes and Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy: The Case of Greece"

Friday, May 2 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Frosina Kekenovska, "What’s Behind the Brain Drain? A Survey-Based Analysis of Youth Emigration in North Macedonia"

Tuesday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Chaya Kimbell, "The Numbers Speak for...whom? Examining the discursive function of quantitative objectivity in the United States' 'post-truth' political disputes"

Tuesday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR1
Dina Zoffoli, "The Response to and Significance of the Aestheticized Death"

Tuesday, May 6 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Yasmine El Hafidi, "Mapping Memory and Listening to Silence: Contemporary Artistic Approaches to Italy's Colonial Time"

Tuesday, May 6 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Faye Dudukovich, "Connection, Fantasy, and Empathy: Mahjong as a Remedy for Whosspels’ Alienation"

Wednesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR1
Mykyta Vorobiov, "Russian Pro-War Posters in 2022-2025: a Critical Analysis"

Wednesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Joan Kacyira, "Queering the German Colonial Archive: Finding Alternative Histories of Rwandans and their Land"

Wednesday, May 7 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, Lecture Hall
Abdullah Naseer, "Democratization of Video Art through (re)generative AI"

Wednesday, May 7 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR1
Dorien Schoenmaker, "'Never Play with Fire next to a Haystack': Populism and Rural Resentment in the Netherlands"

Wednesday, May 7 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, K24 SR11
Violet Smith, "Reasoning behind the Seasoning: the Politics of Cultural Identity through Culinary Preservation, Using Recipes as Archives to Maintain Identity in Mexican Diaspora Communities Located in the U.S."

Wednesday, May 7 | 3:30pm-4:00pm, Lecture Hall
Bruno Munoz-Oropeza, "Democracy's Final Frontier: Populism and Vigilantism in the Americas"

Friday, May 9 | 12:45pm-1:15pm, P98A Lecture Hall
Aleksandra Vartsaba, "Investigating Bucha: The Role of Investigative Journalism in Times of Crisis"

Be a BCB Student for a Day!
Bard College Berlin  10:00 am – 5:00 pm CET/GMT+1

We're delighted to invite admitted students and their families to visit Bard College Berlin on
Saturday, April 12.

Join us for a day on our campus where you can meet fellow admitted students, attend a seminar with our professors, meet our staff, take a full tour of the campus, and hear from our current students about life as a Bard Berliner.

Admitted students can access the registration link in their applicant portal.

We look forward to welcoming you to the BCB campus!

Online (Zoom)  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
How does the body stay healthy and heal? This lecture explores evolving premodern visions of the body, moving between medical traditions in the East and West. We will trace the shift from reverence for ancient texts to the rise of experimentation in early modern medicine. We will consider how mechanical models of the body and reflections on the mind-body relationship reshaped medical theory and practice. We will also touch on the roles of physicians and midwives in the expanding efforts to help women better understand their own bodies—a theme that still echoes in medical discourse today.

Zoom link
Meeting ID: 814 1599 4756
Passcode: 637738

Maria Avxentevskaya specializes in the premodern history of science and medicine, as well as the longue durée history of scientific communication. Her research has been supported by the Max Planck Society, the DFG, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Herzog August Bibliothek, the Warburg Institute, and the European Commission. She has taught courses on early modern science and scientific communication at Bard College Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and the University of Sydney. Maria’s science journalism has been republished by The Independent and Scientific American.

W15 Cafe  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Please join us for the final SLC Community Forum of the semester, cohosted by StuPa.

K30 Lounge  7:30 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
(Now taking place on Wednesday, April 9)

Our book for the fourth event of the Human Library project will be Ali ATH. What is the Human Library project? Each event of this project features a different "book"—a real person with a meaningful, lived experience to share. Unlike a traditional library, the "books" in our Human Library are individuals who open up their personal stories for us to engage with, creating deeper connections and promoting understanding.

Our goal is to create space for authentic, human stories—stories that often get lost or overshadowed by the noise of media, stereotypes, and the routine of everyday life. The narratives can explore themes such as identity, immigration, places, culture, and more. The possibilities are endless.

W15  7:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Join GoGreen for a screening of the documentary film "2040," which highlights some hopeful solutions for the future of the climate crisis. Held in W15 at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 9th. Come and bring your friends! There will also be popcorn. 

Online (Zoom)  2:00 pm – 3:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Why would a powerful emperor of a vast empire devote his precious time to geometry, astronomy, and musical harmonics? This lecture explores the extraordinary intellectual project of the Kangxi Emperor, who—at the height of Qing imperial power—embraced Western astronomy brought to him by the Jesuits. At the same time that the Church was condemning Galileo in Europe, they were spreading science to China. ​The Chinese emperor​, it turned out, had no intentions to convert to Christianity​. His aim was to consolidate his rule through the mastery of measurement.

Zoom link
Meeting ID: 837 2155 6051
Passcode: 793760

This event is hosted by the Early Modern Science core. All interested faculty, students, and alumni are invited to join.
This lecture will be recorded. Please contact Ewa Atanassow ([email protected]) if you are interested and cannot attend.

Andrew Hui teaches at Yale-NUS College and is the author of three books, most recently The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (2025) He was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in the 2023-24 academic year, working on a new book on the Jesuits in China and the formation of the early modern global age.

W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstrasse 15, 13156) and online  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Alexandra (Sasha) Skochilenko will discuss her studies in anthropology at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia) and how this experience shaped and strengthened her anti-war stance. She will also reflect on her famous courtroom speech, “Oh yes, life!”, which explores the value of life and reconciliation in times of war and conflict, and how these ideas helped her survive imprisonment.

The conversation will be moderated by Ilya Kalinin, Sasha’s former academic advisor at Smolny College, currently a Smolny Beyond Borders fellow and Einstein fellow at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

To attend in-person at Bard College Berlin, please register here. To participate in the event via Zoom, please use this link.

Sasha Skochilenko is a Russian artist, musician, poet, and former political prisoner. She was arrested in April 2022 in Saint Petersburg for distributing anti-war messages. Amnesty International declared her a prisoner of conscience, the Memorial human rights organization recognized her as a political prisoner, and the BBC included her in its 100 Women of 2022 list. In November 2023, she was sentenced to seven years in prison under Russia’s so-called "fake news" law.

After spending more than two years behind bars, Skochilenko was released in Ankara on August 1, 2024, as part of a complex international prisoner exchange. She currently lives in Germany and continues her artistic work. In 2024, she participated in exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, showcasing her drawings created in prison. Beyond her activism, she is the author of Book About Depression (2014), which played a significant role in destigmatizing mental health issues in Russia. She is openly lesbian, and her partner actively worked to raise awareness about her case and the conditions of her detention.

The case study prepared by Bard College student Sofia Semenova documents the harsh conditions of Skochilenko’s imprisonment and its effects on her physical and mental health.

The Factory  7:00 pm – 10:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Join us for the Spring Open-Mic Night. All are invited to attend or perform, sharing any and all kinds of talents, whether that's singing, playing an instrument, rapping, reading poetry or spoken, or more. To perform, students can fill out this Google form, or sign up on the sign up sheet at the event. The event will end with karaoke! 

If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected]

  W15 Cafe  We are cordially inviting you to the Thesis Gong Ceremony for our Spring 2025 Graduates!

The ceremony will take place on Friday, April 4th at 4pm in the W15 Cafe. Light refreshments will be served.

W15 Cafe  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
How does it feel to speak your colonizer’s language and find yourself between the lines? This time in focus are the lingering effects of Russification in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Russification is a policy of linguistic and cultural assimilation of non-Russian peoples used by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and currently the Russian Federation. Since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, the usage of Russian language became an especially triggering topic. Your fellow students Liza and Aisholpan will give historic context of how the native languages were suppressed in Ukraine and Kazakhstan and address the recent tensions that occur between residents of the countries who were and, to an extent, remain affected by Russification. There will be short presentations and an open discussion, so please bring your questions and opinions!

W15 Cafe  1:00 pm – 1:45 pm CET/GMT+1
The BCB Internship Program offers students the opportunity to gain off-campus workplace experience in a field related to their studies or career goals. Students work 10-13 hours per week at an internship while exploring key questions regarding work in an internship seminar led by Agata Lisiak and Florian Duijsens. While most internships are unpaid, students will earn academic credit through the seminar. 
 If you're a current or upcoming third-year student interested in gaining hands-on experience while interning with an organization or individual in Berlin, save the date for our information session. Join us at the W15 café to learn more about this valuable opportunity!

Online (Zoom)  6:00 pm – 7:30 pm CET/GMT+1
Within the long nineteenth century that frames the first 100 years of America’s existence as a republic, French writers, artists, and musicians were drawn to describe and depict the young nation’s political experiments, vast landscapes, and diverse culture. Varied images of American freedom, resiliency, power, as well as backwardness appeared throughout the nineteenth century, which showcased to the world America’s arrival on the international stage. Nowhere was this more on display in all of its complexity than during the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, where from May until November, two times a day, French audiences witnessed stage couch robberies, six-gun trick shooting, cowboy roping, Native American dances and the ever-powerful image of Colonel William F. Cody (i.e., Buffalo Bill), held astride a white horse, riding in to save former Europeans from marauding Indians. The music and the live-action scenes of the show successfully captured French notions of l’ouest sauvage, which was fueled by French translations of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper and the Western-themed novels of Gustave Aymard. In this presentation, I will be discussing the Wild West Show of Buffalo Bill in France and how such a sonic and visual narrative, often viewed as a cacophony of mass entertainment and crass commercialism, was received by the French and expressed in the music of fin-de-siècle France.

Please register here. You will receive the Zoom link to the event after your registration. 

Mark A. Pottinger is Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Communication, Sound, and Media Arts Department at Manhattan University in New York City. Winner of the Berlin Prize in 2017, Pottinger is the author of numerous publications on the music and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe and the contemporary listening environment. His most recent publications include a book on Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor (Cambridge University Press) and a forthcoming book on nineteenth-century science in relation to the sound and look of nature in romantic opera (Boydell & Brewer). Currently serving as co-chief editor of Sound Studies Review: An International Peer-Reviewed Music Journal (Brepols Publishers), Pottinger’s recent writings examine the concept of ‘soundscapes’ and their connection to political power and technology.

  Meet us online!
Online Event  Interested in learning more about Bard College Berlin?
Join us on March 29 for Virtual Open Day. You will have the chance to meet current BCB students, and attend informational sessions about our application process, degree programs, student life, campus facilities, and more.

Register here

 

Lecture Hall (Platanenstr. 98a, 13156 Berlin)  7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1
Update 27/3/25:
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Alena Jabarine will not be able to join us. However, we are pleased to announce that Riad Othman, Near-East Coordinator at Medico International and formerly Medico’s bureau chief in Israel and Palestine, will join Nimrod Falshenberg, a co-founder of the Berlin-based organization Israelis for Peace, to complete our esteemed panel.
Since March 18, the ceasefire agreement has collapsed. Together, our panelists will discuss the challenges to sustaining the ceasefire and advancing towards longer-term solutions.

On January 19, 2025, a ceasefire in Gaza came into effect, marking a tentative pause in 18 months of war that began with Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, and was followed by a devastating Israeli incursion into Gaza, resulting in a massive loss of civilian lives. So far the ceasefire agreement remains precarious, given the lack of concrete peace-building mechanisms and, more recently, concerns over Trump’s abhorrent plan for the permanent displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.

To address these issues we invite you to a panel discussion with Alena Jabarine, a Palestinian-German journalist, and Nimrod Flaschenberg, a member of the Berlin-based organization Israelis for Peace. 

Together with our panelists, we will discuss the present realities Palestinians are facing in Gaza, in the West Bank, and inside Israel. We will ask what challenges stand in the way of sustaining the ceasefire agreement and advancing towards longer-term solutions. We will also examine the impact of the war on Palestinian and Israeli communities here in Germany, the growing concern over the rise of antisemitism, concerns over the narrowing of freedom of speech when it comes to criticism of Israel. 

This timely conversation aims to unpack the complexities of the ongoing conflict and assess what the future may hold for peace and security in the region.

Register Here

Alena Isabelle Jabarine (born 1985 in Hamburg) is a journalist. She studied political science in Hamburg and international relations in Barcelona. Following an internship at NDR, she has been working as a freelance journalist since 2015, primarily for public broadcasters. Jabarine lived in Ramallah From 2020 to the end of 2022. Her book, Der letzte Himmel: Meine Suche nach Palästina, will be published this May by Ullstein Verlag.

Nimrod Flaschenberg (born 1990 in Tel Aviv) is an activist, writer, and analyst. He is co-founder of the Berlin-based advocacy group Israelis for Peace. Previously, he worked as a Knesset staffer and campaign manager for Hadash, a Jewish-Arab left-wing political party in Israel.

Online (Zoom)  7:00 pm – 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1
As part of the second phase of the "Period" Project" a collaborative initiative by EJAAD Berlin and the Bard Feminist Collective, we have invited Dr. Mirjam Werner from the Rotterdam School of Management to share her research on how multimodality, i.e. the use of images and humor, has contributed to challenging menstrual stigma and taboo. In this online event, Dr. Werner will be giving a presentation followed by a Q&A session and discussion. Whether you experience menstruation or not, please join and help us deconstruct harmful notions regarding menstruation.

Register here to access the Zoom link.

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!