Wintersemester 2025/2026

11.11.2025 Romana Pozniak (University of Mainz / Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research Zagreb): „Social Reproduction and Humanitarianism: Feminisation of Care in the Croatian Migration Regime“

Rote Infobox, Moderation: Čarna Brković

Abstract: Despite its devotion to saving lives, humanitarianism has long been criticized for its paternalistic nature. Many academic accounts have tried to understand and illustrate the contradictions accompanying this moral project, both internationally and locally. This particularly refers to its dedication to universal humanity and the simultaneous reproduction of inequalities it is supposed to fight against. The area of migration – especially clandestine movements caused by cruel border policies – has been a common ground for humanitarian action. The reason for this has been the lack of institutional care policies that would focus on precarious and irregularized migration. In order to address the problem of humanitarization of care in the Croatian migration regime, I draw upon the notion of social reproduction. By examining the interplay between care work underlying grassroots initiatives and a more formal set of care policies, I aim to identify practices that indicate a systematic feminization of care. This will help me address the ambivalence of political work in humanitarian projects, while situating my research within the broader context of the disintegration of care in Croatia and beyond.

Bio: Romana Pozniak is a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie-Fellow with a PhD in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology obtained in 2022 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. Her research interests are based at the intersection of humanitarianism, critical migration studies and anthropology of labor. Since 2013, she has been involved in the work of NGOs and self-organized collectives advocating against border violence and for non-hierarchical politics of care.

18.11.2025 Dženeta Hodžić (Goethe University Frankfurt): “Towards political geomorphologies of post-Yugoslav environments? Spotlights from an ethnography on groundwater, karst, and its caregivers”

Besprechungsraum am Erdgeschoss Philo II, Moderation: Roman Olshevskiy

Abstract: This talk investigates how groundwater in the Dinaric karst co-produces landscapes, infrastructures, and political imaginations. Drawing on ethnographic research across Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, I foreground unruliness, an emic characterization of groundwater’s indeterminacy, as a conceptual hinge. Unruliness directs attention to groundwater’s capacity to evade administrative designs, shape the earth’s sub-/surface, and resonate with local geopolitical positionalities. I discuss this idea in three spotlights: (1) Knowledge and geopolitical histories, from Yugoslav karst scholarship to EU policy transposition; (2) infrastructuring, where science-policy projects try to accommodate groundwater flows, and (3) care, in the embodied expertise of water workers who negotiate water safety and sufficiency amid legacies of war and twofold uncertainty regarding groundwater and geopolitics. Re-centering water as a geomorphic agent articulates a political geomorphology attentive to the entanglements of surface and subsurface, knowledge and care, in shaping sustainable and just groundwater futures.

Bio: Dženeta Hodžić has been a research scientist at the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), Frankfurt am Main since 2020. Part of the research hubs water and land use and transdisciplinarity, she is particularly interested in ethnographic research in transdisciplinary (ground-)water research at the intersection of anthropological Science and Technology Studies, environmental and political anthropology. Since 2021, she has been pursuing her doctorate at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she is a research associate at the DFG-Research Training Group Fixing Futures—Technologies of Anticipation in Contemporary Societies. She currently co-leads the Volkswagen research project InfraSETS—Infrastructuring Social-Ecological Transformations in Water Management and Nature Protection in Karst Landscapes together with Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky. She holds a BA and MA in English and European Ethnology from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, where she also worked at the Institute for European Ethnology and the WZB—Berlin Social Science Center.

25.11.2025 Olga Reznikova (Universität Zürich): „Bürgerliche Kälte der Prekären: Amateurfilme aus dem migrantischen New York“

Besprechungsraum am Erdgeschoss Philo II, Moderation: Milana Čergić

Abstrakt: Im Vortrag wird anhand von Amateurfilmen, die prekäre russischsprachige Migrant:innen in einer New Yorker Nachbarschaft in den 2000er und 2010er Jahren gedreht haben, die Darstellung gesellschaftlicher Verachtung und frauenfeindlicher Gewalt im Kontext migrantischer Enttäuschung über die Versprechen des amerikanischen Traums besprochen. Die Videos aus einem privaten Archiv werden also einerseits in Bezug zu anderen populären Amateurgenres wie Trivialliteratur im Selbstverlag und Straßenmusik und andererseits in Relation zu gesellschaftlichen Ereignissen gesetzt, vor allem zu den Terroranschlägen am 11. September 2001, den Tschetschenienkriegen in Russland und den ökonomischen Transformationen der 1990er und 2000er Jahre.

Bio: Dr. Olga Reznikova studierte am St. Petersburger Institut für Jüdische Studien (Geschichte des Judentums und Kultur des Nahen Ostens) sowie an der LMU München, wo sie ihre Magisterarbeit über anti-tschetschenischen Rassismus schrieb. Nach ihrem Master-Abschluss in Europäischer Ethnologie arbeitete sie als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der LMU München und der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, unter anderem am DFG-Projekt „Urbane Ethiken“. 2021 promovierte sie in Göttingen mit einer Arbeit über Arbeiterproteste in Russland (Publikation: Wut der Fernfahrer: Ethnografie eines sozialen Protests in Russland, 2023, Campus Verlag). Dafür begleitete sie über mehrere Jahre ethnografisch Lkw-Fahrer in der Nähe von Moskau bei ihren Streiks. Als Postdoc arbeitete sie als Forscherin am Max-Planck-Institut in Berlin und als Universitätsassistentin an der Universität Innsbruck. Seit September 2025 ist sie als Oberassistentin am ISEK der Universität Zürich tätig. Derzeit schreibt sie an einem Buch über Grosny in der Zwischenkriegszeit und forscht in New York City und Haifa über die populärkulturellen Aspekte der postsowjetischen jüdischen Emigration. Ihr übergeordnetes Interesse gilt dabei die Geschichte und Widersprüchen des russischen Faschismus. Sie veröffentlicht journalistische und wissenschaftliche Artikel über Feminismus, Rassismus, Protestkultur und Antisemitismus auf Deutsch, Englisch und Russisch.

09.12.2025 Marketa Spiritova (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften): „Geerbte Dinge und Geschichte(n). Biografische Perspektiven auf Vertreibung und Spätaussiedlung aus der ČSSR“

Rote Infobox, Moderation: Christina Niem

Abstrakt: Während die Geschichte der Vertreibung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg aus der Tschechoslowakei, die Erinnerungsdiskurse der Vertriebenenverbände sowie die Lebensgeschichten der Erlebnisgeneration relativ gut erforscht sind, steht die Forschung zum familialen Gedächtnis und zur Bedeutung der Nachfolgegeneration in der Erinnerungskultur, ebenso wie die Geschichte der Spätaussiedlung in den 1960er Jahren noch am Anfang. Im Vortrag soll anhand biografischer Interviews mit Kindern von Vertriebenen und Spätaussiedler:innen den tradierten Erinnerungen, geerbten Dingen und Identitätskonstruktionen nachgespürt werden.

Bio: PD Dr. Marketa Spiritova, Geschäftsleitung am Institut für Volkskunde der Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und Privatdozentin am Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie an der LMU München. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Transformationsprozesse in ländlichen Regionen und im östlichen Europa, Erinnerungskultur, Nationalismus, Protestbewegungen sowie Jugend- und Populärkulturen.

• Studium der Slawistik, Europäischen Ethnologie und Interkulturellen Kommunikation
• Promotion: „Hexenjagd in der Tschechoslowakei. Intellektuelle zwischen Prager Frühling und dem Ende des Kommunismus“ (2007)
• Habilitation: „Performing memories. Erinnerungskulturelle Inszenierungspraktiken historischer Jubiläen nach 1989 in Prag“ (2019)
• Aktuelles Projekt: „KulturRäume – KulturAkteure – KulturPraktiken. Die Bedeutung von ‚Kultur‘ für die Dynamisierung von gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprozessen in ländlichen Räumen“ (BMELH)

16.12.2025 Manuela Boatcă (University of Freiburg): „Creolization as Method. Between European Inter-Imperiality and Global Coloniality“

Rote Infobox, Moderation: Britta Ohm

Abstract: Creolization—a geographically and historically specific process related to the mass movement of people and goods from Europe and Africa to the Americas and the creation of new cultures and peoples in the plantation contact zones has recently acquired currency in the context of debates about transnationalism and globalization studies, including in Europe. In this talk, I argue that, when employed as a method, creolization frames both the historicized singularity and global reach of transborder processes and transregional entanglements first theorized in the context of the Caribbean. I will focus on how creolization helped critically frame a project aimed at revisiting and reframing one of Europe’s peripheral regions, Transylvania. In the resulting book, titled „Creolizing the Modern. Transylvania across Empires“, creolization maps an inter-imperial predicament in which several empires (Habsburg, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian) vied for control of the region.Footnote The scope of the notion of creolization allows us to offer an analysis of the relations of power that tie coloniality and inter-imperiality, the integration of overseas colonial projects and intra-European imperial rivalries.

Bio: Manuela Boatcă is Professor of Sociology and Head of School of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She has published widely on world-systems analysis, decolonial perspectives on global inequalities, gender and citizenship in modernity/coloniality, and the geopolitics of knowledge in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She is the author of From Neoevolutionism to World-Systems Analysis (Leske+Budrich, 2003), Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism (Routledge 2016), Laboratoare ale modernității. Europa de Est și America Latină în (co)relație (IDEA, 2020) and co-author, with Anca Parvulescu, of Creolizing the Modern. Transylvania Across Empires (Cornell UP 2022, German translation transcript 2025).

13.01.2026 Magdalena Buchczyk (Humboldt Universität): „Vital heritage, politics of speculation and uncertain futures in the Mediterranean“

Besprechungsraum am Erdgeschoss Philo II, Moderation: Dafina Gashi

Abstrakt: Drawing on fieldwork with heritage practitioners in the Sardinian wetlands and activists opposing renewable energy projects, this talk examines how heritage is negotiated and reconfigured amid shifting political and social dynamics in southern Italy. Drawing on insights from studios of heritage basket-makers and from those protesting wind farm developments on the island, I explore how visions and speculations about the future are expressed through imaginaries, constructions, and meanings of the past, political subalterity, and practices of “vital heritage.” This research, I will argue, reflects on the growing social and environmental justice challenges of the Anthropocene in the Mediterranean.

Bio: Magdalena Buchczyk is Junior Professor at the Institute for European Ethnology with a joint affiliation at the Centre for Cultural Techniques (ZfK) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She works at the intersection of material and visual culture, museum anthropology, and critical heritage studies. Her research is based on ethnographic, museum, and archival fieldwork across Eastern and Southern Europe, including Romania, the UK, Italy, Germany, and Poland. She explores how memory and the past are socially and politically mobilised through museum collections, curatorial practices, and intangible heritage, from activist initiatives to nationalist heritage projects. She is author of Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum and co-editor of Unearthing Collections: Archives, Time and Ethics.

20.01.2026 Helmut Groschwitz (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften): „Beratung als Cultural Brokerage. Erfahrungen und Projekte an der Beratungs- und Forschungsstelle Immaterielles Kulturerbe Bayern“

Rote Infobox, Moderation: Mirko Uhlig

Abstrakt: In das Umsetzungsverfahren des UNESCO-Übereinkommens zur Erhaltung des immateriellen Kulturerbes ist – teils offiziell, teils im Verborgenen – eine Vielzahl von Personen und Institutionen involviert, die Teile des „Netzwerkes Kulturerbe“ darstellen. Sie leisten als „Cultural Broker“ wichtige und nötige Übersetzungs- und Vermittlungsarbeiten und tragen zu einem informierten Kulturerbediskurs bei (Informed Heritage Discourse).
In dem Vortrag gehe ich speziell auf die Erfahrungen und Projekte an der Beratungs- und Forschungsstelle Immaterielles Kulturerbe Bayern am Institut für Volkskunde der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften ein. Diese reichen von der Beratung zur Bewerbung für die Verzeichnisse über Vernetzungen, Vermittlungsprojekte und Ansprechpartner für Presseanfragen bis hin zu historischen und empirischen Forschungen zu kulturellen Ausdrucksformen sowie die Reflexion der Verfahren auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene.

Bio: Dr. Helmut Groschwitz studierte Germanistik und Volkskunde in Regensburg und war dort bis 2010 Wissenschaftlicher Assistent, seine Dissertation schrieb er 2005 über Mondkalender. Es folgte bis 2013 eine Lehrstuhlvertretung an der Abteilung Kulturanthropologie/Volkskunde in Bonn. Er war von 2014-2015 freischaffender Kurator, u.a. für das Projekt „EuropaTest“ am Humboldt Lab Dahlem in Berlin, dann von 2015-2018 Mitarbeiter im Projekt eKulturPortal in Regensburg. Seit 2017 leitet er die „Beratungs- und Forschungsstelle Immaterielles Kulturerbe Bayern“ am Institut für Volkskunde an der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in München. Im Sommersemester 2023 hatte er eine Gastprofessur an der Universität Graz mit Schwerpunkt Kulturerbe. Seit Juni 2024 ist er Mitglied des Berliner Komitees für UNESCO-Arbeit.

03.02.2026 Vjeran Pavlaković (University of Rijeka): “Muralization of War: Commemorative Street Art, Political Graffiti, and Memory Politics in Southeast Europe“

Rote Infobox, Moderation: Taylor McConnell

Abstract: The Wars of Yugoslav Dissolution were accompanied by a systematic destruction of the socialist memory cultures, with varying intensity and success across the former republics. The socialist modernist memoryscapes dedicated to the antifascist struggle and revolution were replaced with new monuments, museums, memorial parks and other public sites of memory commemorating the conflicts in the 1990s and revisionist interpretations of the Second World War. At times this new memoryscape allows for a co-existence of the many historical layers, while in many cases the nation-building narratives obliterate all evidence of previous cultures of memory. Three decades after Yugoslavia’s bloody demise, we can observe the institutionalization of the dominant nationalist narratives across the region. Alongside this hyper-production of traditional memorial spaces since 1991, official memory politics have embraced the subcultural media of street art. The next generation of post-Yugoslav youth is now actively engaged in the reproduction of dominant narratives that celebrate war and glorify war criminals through elaborately conceptualized and sophisticated political graffiti, street art, and mnemonic, or “memory-making”, murals. Although sometimes dismissed as simply subaltern art or even vandalism, these forms have continuously been used to send political messages, from the Mexican muralists of the 1930s to the contemporary transnational reactions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork on post-conflict memoryscapes, this lecture explores how murals fit into the larger mosaic of mnemonic production in Croatia and the other Yugoslav successor states: who finances them, who creates them, what is the legal framework for political murals in public space, and what are the cultural policies that determine their content? Furthermore, what is the potential of mnemonic murals in offering alternative narratives that can contribute to reconciliation efforts and avoid future regional conflicts? How can the discussion about mnemonic murals be used in history education, and how can the production of community-based murals help in dealing with difficult pasts. This research has been partially funded by the project “Mnemonic Aesthetics and Strategies in Popular Culture: MEMPOP” (www.mempop.eu), which situates the ex-Yugoslav graffitiscape into a broader comparative context of mural production and reception.

Bio: Vjeran Pavlaković is a Professor of History and Cultural Studies at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He received his Ph.D. in History in 2005 from the University of Washington and has published articles on memory politics in Southeastern Europe, transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia, and Yugoslav volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. He is a co-editor of the volume Framing the Nation and Collective Identity in Croatia (Routledge, 2019), which was re-issued in Croatian in 2022. Current research includes graffiti and murals as sites of memory, Balkan memoryscapes, and a history of Dalmatian immigrants in Arizona.

03.02.2026 Hinweis auf den Vortrag im IFEAS: Christof Dejung (Bern): „Ethnographische Parallelen und deren Grenzen. Temporale und territoriale Ordnungen in der deutschen Volks- und Völkerkunde (1850er bis 1930er Jahre)”
18-20h, im Philosophicum I, Hörsaal P4

10.02.2026 Liviu Chelcea (University of Bucharest)

Fakultätsaal, Philo I, Moderation: Grit Wesser