Activities and upcoming events

Villa in the Jungle or Middle Eastern society? Within the Israeli public sphere, a growing number of voices are critically reexamining whether Israel can still be understood as a Western enclave in the Middle East — a “villa in the jungle,” as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak once famously put it — or whether it ought instead to be conceived as an integral part of the region: on the one hand embedded in a dense web of geopolitical alliances, and on the other increasingly shaped by a distinctly Middle Eastern political culture. Johannes Becke takes up this debate and offers a nuanced inquiry into the cultural positioning of Israeli society. He advances the thesis of a far-reaching cultural and institutional integration of Israel into the broader Middle Eastern and North African space since its founding. Not only do features such as religious law, the extensive security apparatus, and the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities reflect patterns widely observed across the region, but so too do Israeli politics, cuisine, and music. Becke highlights both the promises and the tensions inherent in this process of integration, ultimately portraying Israel not as a Western outpost, but as a Middle Eastern state in its own right.

Wallstein Publishing 

The Research Training Group RTG 2840, “Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe and the Middle East”, cordially invites you to its interdisciplinary research colloquium for the summer semester 2026.

Spread across twelve thought-provoking sessions, international scholars will explore how enmity is shaped by paradox, proximity, and shifting power relations. Please note that registration is required to attend the talks. Participants are kindly asked to register in advance by scanning the provided QR code.

Download program here

Enemy Encounters in East Asia, a webinar offered by the Research Training Group Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

This webinar invites speakers from across different academic disciplines working on East Asia, who deal with antagonisms and processes of enemization in their research. Contributing speakers are encouraged to discuss the enmities and associated ambivalences as they have historically manifested in the concrete conflicts they are studying. The research presented considers both states and non-state actors like religious and political movements. The webinar also includes research which looks at antagonisms within societies, such as those revolving around gender differences and class conflicts. The webinar encourages speakers to elaborate on how enmity and processes of enemization took shape, evolved over time and influenced identities, perceptions of self and others, as well as comportment and state policies.

Please find attached the program for the upcoming term at Heidelberg University, covering March 2026 until July 2026. 

As part of the PhD workshop "Histories of Collections and the Environment," Roland Gromes, Head of the Zoological Collection at Heidelberg University, will lead a public guided tour of the "Timeline Evolution" exhibition. The tour will take place on 26 March at 5pm.

To take part, please register by 20 March 2026 at ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.

On 26 and 27 March, PhD students from Heidelberg, Basel, Zurich and Cambridge universities will present their research projects in the fields of the History of Collections, Environmental History, the History of Science and Art History.

The PhD workshop is funded by the Graduate Academy of Heidelberg University and is affiliated with the Research Training Group "Ambivalent Enmity" project at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies.

Filippo Vaccaro has successfully defended his doctoral thesis „Un'isola ambivalente. La società veneto-cretese, la congiuntura trecentesca e la nascita di un'identità mediterranea (1299-1363)“ . The book analyses Venetian rule in Crete during the 14th century, marking an important milestone in his research. Pursued in a cotutelle cooperation between Sapienza University of Rome and Heidelberg University, his work investigates how this semi-peripheral Mediterranean region responded to political, economic and social transformations under Venetian authority.

The study is based on a variety of primary sources, especially from the Duca di Candia archive in Venice, including council resolutions, administrative records, land registers, court documents, as well as diplomatic, notarial and literary sources such as chronicles and minutes of Venetian bodies. Politically, Crete showed signs of its own identity and scope for action despite Venetian subordination. Economically, the study investigates how cyclical changes affected agriculture, trade, credit systems and financial adaptation strategies. Socially and culturally, the focus is on the relations between the Venetian elite and the Greek population, particularly in the capital Candia, where tensions and exchange processes are evident. 

Overall, the society emerges as one that, on the one hand, experienced growing tensions with Venice, and on the other, developed new institutional and economic solutions to manage property crises and cautiously maintain dialogue with the local Greek community

We are happy that Filippo will remain part of our RTG as an postdoctoral affiliated researcher. 

The workshop examines the dynamics of enmity in major nineteenth- and twentieth-century civil wars, including the American, Russian, Irish, Spanish, Greek, and Chinese Civil Wars. Bringing together scholars from various academic fields, it will explore the conditions under which enmities escalated into full-fledged civil wars; how belligerent parties defined their enemies and gained supporters in conflicts that divided societies, communities, and families; and finally, how civil-war enmity was later used for political purposes or perpetuated in popular culture, literature, and media. The multiple perspectives on civil wars will include not only local and national but also transnational dimensions of the conflicts.

If you are interested in participating please register until the 3rd of December: ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

The workshop will primarily draw from Urvashi Butalias research on the histories of women and marginalized communities affected by conflict, particularly during the Partition of India. It will explore what oral histories contribute beyond more “conventional” historical narratives, as well as the ethical challenges researchers encounter when working with personal testimonies.

The session will be divided into two parts: the first will consist of a short presentation of the her work and the challenges identified; the second will involve listening to the participating scholars discuss their own research and the difficulties they face, followed by a collective discussion on possible ways to address these challenges.

If you are interested in participating please register by the 18th of November via 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

In this workshop, participants are invited to critically reflect on problematic aspects of dominant academic paradigms within political science, Middle Eastern and cultural studies, and psychology. The workshop aims to move beyond enemy-centered notions of human identity and to contribute to a more peaceful understanding of shared reality. The workshop is structured in two parts. In the first part, the Dr. Dehghani presents current research examining how influential theories such as The Clash of Civilizations and Orientalism have, in the post–Cold War era, fueled disputes and tensions. These frameworks not only divided the U.S. academic landscape but also continue to shape discourses surrounding geopolitical conflicts, including those in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and U.S.–China relations. He argues that overcoming this intellectual habit of “foeing” requires rethinking the very concepts of civilization, religion, and the human image (Menschenbild). In this context, Karl Jaspers’ theory of the “Axial Age” is presented as a valuable alternative. After a short break, the second part centers on a discussion informed by a case study concerning the experiences of Elias Khoury and the literary work of Amos Oz. This case demonstrates how a dualistic worldview of friend and foe can be transcended, revealing the innate dignity and “constructive resilience” of human beings in their ability to respond to trauma with creativity and non-violence. Participants are encouraged to share their perspectives and reflections on the issues discussed. 

If you are interested in participating please register by the 12th of November via 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

Enemy Encounters in East Asia, a webinar offered by the Research Training Group Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. 

This webinar invites speakers from across different academic disciplines working on East Asia, who deal with antagonisms and processes of enemization in their research. Contributing speakers are encouraged to discuss the enmities and associated ambivalences as they have historically manifested in the concrete conflicts they are studying. The research presented considers both states and non-state actors like religious and terrorist movements. The webinar also includes research which looks at antagonisms within societies, such as those revolving around gender differences and class conflicts. The webinar encourages speakers to elaborate on how enmity and processes of enemization took shape, evolved over time and influenced identities, perceptions of self and others, as well as comportment and state policies.

Please find attached the program for the upcoming term at Heidelberg University, covering October 2025 until February 2026. 

Download program here

The Research Training Group RTG 2840, “Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe and the Middle East”, cordially invites you to its interdisciplinary research colloquium for the winter semester of 2025/26.

Spread across twelve thought-provoking sessions, international scholars will explore how enmity is shaped by paradox, proximity, and shifting power relations. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore a variety of topics, ranging from maritime rivalries and legal frameworks to gendered violence and nationalist ideologies. Please note that registration is required to attend the talks. Participants are kindly asked to register in advance by scanning the provided QR code.

Download program here

Our image of the Middle Ages is shaped by farmers and knights, and when we think of medieval seafaring, we picture bulbous Hanseatic cogs and fast Viking ships. But what did people know about the sea itself and its creatures? How did they benefit from its raw materials? In his book, historian Nikolas Jaspert presents the first history of the Middle Ages from the perspective of the sea. He recounts tales of fishing and whaling, and of the trade in elegant shell silk, fragrant ambergris, and imperial purple. Above all, however, his book is about the treasures of the sea and their breathtaking beauty and diversity.
 

By describing an entire epoch of human history through the creatures and materials of the sea for the first time, Jaspert vividly demonstrates that our survival as a species depends on this ecosystem.

 Ullstein Book Publishing House

Fabian Baumann, one of the postdoctoral scholars in the RTG Ambivalent Enmity, was awarded the 2024 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize at the recent annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Boston. The W. Bruce Lincoln Prize is awarded annually for an author’s first published monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past. The prize jury praised Baumann’s monograph Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism as “an exquisitely sophisticated study of how individuals came to embrace identities with profound political meaning.”

ASEEES Homepage

We are excited to announce that a new issue of the Journal of Transcultural Studies has appeared on 6 May 2024.

This is a Special Issue on the theme of Ambivalent Enmity, guest edited by Johannes Becke, Nikolas Jaspert, and Joachim Kurtz. It features contributions from Heidelberg-based scholars Tanja Penter, Svenja Taubner, Monica Juneja, Johannes Becke, Joachim Kurtz, and Sebastian Harnisch, as well as a piece by Derek Penslar (Harvard).

The issue is closely connected to our RTG Ambivalent Enmity

Download

We are looking forward to the upcoming workshop “Staging Enmity: From Representation to Projection” of our second research focus of the RTG . This workshop engages in the connection between enmity and representation. Focusing on questions like “In what context is enmity staged?” or “How should we understand the impact on, and agency of, the targets of enmity representation?“.

Program

The workshop takes place at the HCTS (Voßstrasse 2) in Room 400.02.12 on the 24th and 25th January. You can register via 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

For a more profound description of the upcoming workshop our Mercator Fellow Dr. Lola Guyot provided a keynote explaining the topics, questions and goals of the workshop. 

Dr. Lola Guyot Keynote - Abstract

We are glad to announce our upcoming workshop “Meeting the Enemy at the Border: The Relational Dynamics of Contact Zones” of our third research focus of the RTG. 

Program

The workshop takes place at the Völkerkundemuseum VPST (Hauptstraße 235) on the 12th and 13th December. You can register via 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

We are delighted to announce, that Dr. Ahmed Mansour is going to hold a Fireside Chat with the title Preventing Extremism on the 6th December 2024.

Dr. Ahmed Mansour is a psychologist, bestselling author and has a Dr. theol. h. c. from the University of Basel. His work focuses on preventing extremism, especially Islamic extremism. He is Founder and CEO of Mind (Mansour-Initiative für Demokratieförderung und Extremismusprävention), which offers young adults and teenagers as well as workers from psycho therapy, pedagogy and management, who had experience with migration, extremism and violence, the opportunity to think independently and reflected.

The chat is going to take place at the HCTS, Room 400.02.12 at 12:30 a.m.

Please register until the 2nd December 2024.

Register

The HfjS is going to hold a workshop about Antisemitism in Scholarship and the Arts with intriguing panels and engaging talks (e.g. featuring Aleida Assman from the University of Konstanz).

Program

The workshop is going to take place at the HfjS at 9:30 a.m till 6 p.m.

Please register until the 21st October 2024.

Register

Start of eventseries on the topic „Antisemitism in Scholarship and the Arts“. On the 25th of October 2024 Hito Steyerl will hold a lecture on the topic the Empty Center. This will be followed by the vernisage of her exhibition „Normalität“ at Heidelberger Kunstverein on the 26th of October 2024 and the upcoming Workshop "Debates on Antisemitism in Scholarship and the Arts at Hochschule für Jüdische Studien on the 28th October 2024. 

Heidelberger Kunstverein

This week we are able to present to you our upcoming colloquium for the winter term 2024/2025.

During this semester, starting on the 14th of October, the doctoral researchers of the RTG “Ambivalent Enmity” will present their process and dissertation projects. We will also have interesting guest lecturers, who will inform us about collaborative research projects such as the Horizon Arenas-Project.

The colloquium takes place every Monday at 2 p.m.-4 p.m. at HCTS Room 400.02.12. 

Program

We are delighted to announce, that our Affiliated Researcher Dr. Lily Eilan is going to give a lecture about The Sacred Tie between the Druzes and the Jews? A Re-evaluation.

Dr. Lily Eilan has a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies in the Hebrew University and a M.phil. in Middle Eastern studies at Oxford University. Her research focus is on the Social History of the Western Galilee 1936-76.

The lecture is going to take place at the HfJS, S4 at 4 p.m. We are looking forward to every participant.

We are thrilled to invite you to a showing of the most recent documentary The Specter of Populism by Dr. Jürgen Schaflechner. There will also be a unique opportunity for discussion after the showing.

The film is going to be shown at the HCTS, Room 400.00.12 at 6 p.m.

Populism has become one of the most debated political terms of the last decade and populist demands have become political realities. From Brazil, through India to the USA populists have gained political traction. On the other hand, the politics of these and similar governments have sparked unlikely alliances of people from all backgrounds fighting against oppression. In the light of these developments, should we still speak of populism as a political zeitgeist? With the help of experts from fields such as Political Sciences, Philosophy, Anthropology, and History this documentary film will shine a spotlight on the complex theories of populist politics and their significance for our current political nexus.

Dr. Jürgen Schaflechner is the research group leader of Social and Cultural Anthropology, FU Berlin. He and his team study the political and social movements of religious minorities in South Asia in the advent of social media and communicative capitalism. Jürgen has also filmed, edited, and produced six documentary films on topics such as the alleged forced conversion of Hindu women to Islam in Sindh, the life-worlds of Pakistani Hindu refugees in India, and the sacrificial rites amongst the Devapujak-Vagri community in Karachi. If you would like to find out more about him and his work find more information here:
 

Jürgen Schaflechner

The following day Prof. Dr. Liat Kozma is offering a Workshop on Archival Research in the Modern Middle East.

The Workshop is taking place on the 23rd May 2024, Hannah-Arendt-Saal HfJS Heidelberg (Landfriedstraße 12) from 9:45 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. Feel free to join per registration trough 

registration@hfjs.eu

We are excited to welcome Prof. Dr. Liat Kozma, Associated Professor of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. She is going to talk about The Formation of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis and the International Red Cross, 1949-1950.

Prof. Dr. Liat Kozma´s research is focused on feminism in contemporary Morocco, marginalized women in nineteenth-century Egypt, and medical discourses on sexuality in both the Jewish Yishuv and in early twentieth-century Arab societies. 

More Information

The lecture is going to take place at the Historisches Seminar, Lecture Hall (Grabengasse 3-5) from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. We are looking forward to every participant.

This week we are able to present to you our upcoming colloquium for the summer term 2024.

Starting on 22 April 2024, at 2 PM with a seminar by Prof. em. Vamik Volkan, who will be speaking on the formation and understanding of large group identity. There are more compelling seminars to come, which are presented on our colloquium´s schedule. Every seminar contributes a different, from ethnic to religious, perspective towards our topic, i.e. Dr. Lola Guyot, our Mercator Fellow, will be speaking about Hindu nationalism and the Muslim ´enemy´ in the United Kingdom or another example: Dr. Dmytro Tytarenko, Dr. Tetiana Perga and Dr. Tetiana Pastuschenko will be speaking about Personal Perspectives on the Russian War in Ukraine.

The colloquium will take place every Monday in the HCTS in Room 400.02.12, Voßstr. 2, Building 4400 from 2PM to 4PM.

This week we are able to present to you Prof. em. Vamık Volkan, who will be speaking on the formation and understanding of large group identity, i. e. our sense of self within society, and its relevancy in our lives.

The seminar will take place on 22 April 2024, at 2 PM. You may access it via Zoom with this link. Alternatively, you may take part in the seminar at HCTS in Room 400.002.12, Voßstr. 2, Building 4400.

Vamık Volkan is a professor emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia and has dedicated his life to the establishment of dialogue and mutual understanding in conflict scenarios. He is the founder of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI) and has won multiple awards and honors for his work toward conflict resolution.

Prof. Volkan will also be speaking at the German-American Institute (DAI) in Heidelberg two days later, on 24 April 2024. Tickets may be purchased here.

We are excited to welcome Prof. Dr. Viktoriya Sereda, head of the Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Studies (VUIAS), and Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel-Prize awarded Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), to a roundtable on “Ukrainian-Russian Enmity and Entanglement”.

The event will take place on February 22, 2024, 18:00 CET.

The roundtable will be conducted online via Zoom! Please register with: 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

Viktoriya Sereda is sociologist and currently Head Coordinator at the VUIAS. Since February 2022, Prof. Sereda has led research into the fate suffered by the Ukrainian population displaced by Russia’s invasion of the country.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights lawyer and activists who is head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv, which was awarded the Noble Prize in 2022. It is one of her greatest concerns to document the war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, for which she and the Center have already conducted numerous witness interviews and collected evidence.

The roundtable we announced in our last post has now been published in full length on the official Heidelberg University YouTube channel.

We highly recommend the deep insights provided by renowned Ukrainian sociologist Prof. Dr. Viktoriya Sereda, Oleksandra Matviichuk from the Nobel Prize winning Center for Civil Liberties as well as Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Corry Guttstadt as the next guest in our recurring Fireside Chats! This time we will have the opportunity to speak and hear more about the state of antisemitism in Turkish and Muslim societies. The event will take place on February 7 at 2 p.m. in Room S4 at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien.

Please register under the following e-mail address: 

ambivalent-enmity@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de

Corry Guttstadt is a renowned turcologist and historian. Her research is focused on the situation of minorities in Türkiye, antisemitism and the history of Sephardic Jews. She is currently associated with the ikw Hamburg as well as a former Senior Fellow with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute on Holocaust Studies and has led the Türkei-Europa-Zentrum in Hamburg.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Matthew Vollgraff for a lecture on the topic of “The Imperial Childhood of World Art: Revisiting Karl Lamprecht’s ‘Hall of Culture’ Exhibition”. The event will take place on December 19 at 6 p.m. in Room 400.02.12 at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (Voßstr. 2, Building 4400, Second floor).

Matthew Vollgraff is a cultural historian who specializes in the science, politics, and visual culture of modern central Europe. He is a NOMIS fellow at the University of Basel, currently working on a new book project titled Migration as Method: Diffusionism and the Global Politics of the Deep Past, 1890–1960.

In the summer of 1914, just months before the outbreak of the First World War, the first comparative exhibition of ‘world art history’ opened at an international trade fair in Leipzig. Curated by the historian Karl Lamprecht, this ‘Hall of Culture’ was an unusually cosmopolitan affair that showcased photographic reproductions of artworks from ancient Greece, India, China, Japan, Mesoamerica, and prehistoric Europe. Yet all of this was organized around an unlikely core: Lamprecht’s prodigious collection of drawings by children from all over the globe, intended to serve as comparative indices of ethnic or national mental ‘development’. Taking this long-overlooked exhibition as its focus, this talk sites the origins of the discourse on ‘world art’ at the perilous convergence of universal history, child psychology and the imperial politics of the late Wilhelmine Empire. The 1914 exhibition was not only rooted in paternalistic colonial imaginaries but also in Lamprecht’s concrete policies for cultural imperialism abroad, which carried the covert support by the Foreign Office. Ultimately the forgotten history of the ‘Hall of Culture’ exhibition offers an alternative genealogy of global art history that emerges from the conflicted encounter between Enlightenment ideals and colonial relations.

We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Brahim El Guabli and Alessia Colonnelli for a roundtable on the topic of “Amazigh Soft Power: How Moroccan Imazighen Used Traditional Channels to Make Change”.

The event will take place online on December 13 at 4 p.m. via Zoom.

Prof. Dr. Brahim El Guabli is an Associate Professor of Arabic Studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College, Massachusetts, USA. His research encompasses areas of language politics, indigeneity,  human rights, transitional justice, political violence, archive creation, memory studies, Amazigh/Berber literatures, and environmental humanities.

Professor El Guabli and our doctoral candidate Alessia Colonnelli will discuss the dynamics of conflict and bottom-up empowerment of the Amazigh identity movement in Morocco, by addressing the politics of identity in contemporary North Africa. Different patterns of conflict between the state and Moroccan indigenous Amazigh communities, as well as repertoires of soft power that Amazigh communities have resorted to exert pressure for a progressive recognition of Amazigh linguistic, cultural, and indigenous rights, will be discussed.

On November 30, 2023, 5 p.m. we will be celebrating the official opening of our Research Training Group in the Grand Hall (Alte Aula) of Heidelberg University.

We are delighted that we were able to win Derek J. Penslar (Harvard University) for the keynote speech. He will deliver a lecture entitled “BETWEEN AMITY AND ENMITY: JEWISH AND ARAB MUTUAL PERCEPTIONS IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Derek J. Penslar is William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is known for his comparative and transnational approaches. He is currently working on a book on the worldwide reactions to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

The jazz pianist Dan Popek will provide the musical programme.

Registration with registration(at)hfjs.eu is required.

Program

We are excited to welcome Dr. Irena Kalhousová, head of the Herzl Center for Israel Studies in Prague, to give a lecture on “Trauma and Foreign Policy: Israel and the Gaza Strip”.

20 November 2023, 18:15 CET
Hannah-Arendt-Saal, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Landfriedstraße 12

Registration with registration(at)hfjs.eu is required.
The event can also be followed via live stream on request.