Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF)

Conveners: Oliver Razum (Bielefeld), Lisa Eckenwiler (Fairfax), Verina Wild (München), Angus Dawson (Sydney) Refugee migration is a particularly highly regulated form of migration. Policies and regulations address essential domains of life, for example housing: refugees are frequently accommodated in mass shelters or camps, where they usually have to follow strict rules and remain under close observation. They are being taken care of, but can thereby be disempowered and lose control over their day-to-day responsibilities and freedoms such as food provision,…

Scenarios – techniques and practices for doubling reality Date: 21 – 24 June 2021 Convenor: Matthias Schaffrick (Siegen) Scenarios are popular techniques of theory building and development within various disciplines. There is, however, a remarkable lack of interdisciplinary research on scenarios, although the ongoing debate about scenarios across politics, science, and society seems to require such an interdisciplinary approach. The workshop investigates concepts and methods of scenarioing as techniques and practices for 'doubling- reality'. Scenarios offer insights into the epistemological…

ZiF Workshop Opium Wars – Opium Cultures: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Date: 23 – 24 June 2021 Convenor: Nadine Böhm-Schnitker (Bielefeld) The conference 'Opium Wars – Opium Cultures' is to explore the two Opium Wars (1839-42; 1856-60) in their 19th-century contexts, particularly with regard to the fraught intersection of capitalism and imperialism, and it is to extend this view by an interdisciplinary, intercultural and transnational approach in order to take into account the very different historiographies of the events from a British,…