Azadeh Sharifi is a theatre and performance scholar and is currently covering professorship for the theory and history of theatre at the Berlin University of the Arts. She has previously held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Toronto and the Berlin University of the Arts. Her research focuses on postcolonial and postmigrant theatre and its history, contemporary performance art, and decolonial and activist practices in theatrical spaces. She is currently working on her second monograph, Theatre in Post-Migrant Germany: Performing Race, Migration and Coloniality Since 1945.

Dis:connected artistic genealogies, othered aesthetics - Brecht's legacies in the artistic work of Türkisches Ensemble am Berliner Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer (1979-84) and Teatro Lautaro at Volksbühne Rostock (1974-81)

This project explores the artistic genealogies and aesthetics of the work of the two theatre groups, the Türkisches Ensemble am Berliner Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer (1979-84) and the Teatro Lautaro/ Volksbühne Rostock (1974-81), and their reciprocal relation to Brecht's reception in their countries of origin as well as in East and West Germany.  The project focuses on their aesthetic and theoretical contribution to a transnational reception of Brecht and aims to make the artists and their work visible and accessible for the field of performance studies.

Katy is an art critic based in London. She is the founder and editor of KT press (1998-present) and n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal (1998-2017). She was a professor of contemporary art, theory and criticism at Middlesex University (2013-Feb 2025). She is the editor/author of over 10 books, Conversations on Art, Artworks and Feminism (KT press, 2025), (ed) Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms (Valiz, 2020), a special issue of Arts(MDPI) ‘Beyond/Around Feminist Aesthetics’ (2023).  

Feminisms, contemporary art, links and disconnections with world-system theories

This is an issue-based political analysis of the problematics of feminist art criticism, where the focus is on transnational and transgenerational feminisms. This is a story of interruptions, absences, detours and aporia. World-systems theories (e.g. Maria Mies and Immanuel Wallerstein) as theories about capital accumulation provide starting points to describe the diverse locations of feminism around the globe over the last 60 years. The aim is to rethink how feminisms operate as a geo-culture beyond borders and as a travelling concept.

Ulinka is a professor of early modern history at the University of Cambridge and fellow of the British Academy and St John’s College. Born in Tübingen, she studied history, art history, and sociology in Hamburg and Cambridge. Her award-winning books include The Astronomer & the Witch, Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece and Dressing Up. She has held fellowships in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Harvard and published widely on the reformation and cultural identity.   Ulinka joined global dis:connect as a shared fellow with Historisches Kolleg.

The triumph of fashion: a global history from the Silk Roads to empires of cotton

What role has fashion played through history? How has it shaped societies and influenced how people have expressed their identities? This is one of the most intriguing historical questions. Accelerated forces of economic and technological development — through cities, rural areas and globally — alongside state formation, urbanisation and profound artistic, religious and social transformations intertwined with new forms of knowledge and information, emerging sensibilities, ideas and compelling narratives about what defines a society.

Carlo is currently a research fellow at Sciences Po. His research interests include political violence and radicalism; the far right and neofascism; political terrorism in post-war Europe; the history of extremist ideologies, social movements, and the history of citizenship.   He also teaches at Sciences Po, where he teaches a course entitled The Far Right in Europe at the Nancy campus. He holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po. Previously, he worked as a temporary lecturer and researcher at the University of Lille and as a teaching assistant at Sciences Po and the Università degli Studi di Milano.  

Transnationalisation of far-right intellectual circles in Europe from the 1980s to 2020

As a fellow at global dis:connect, Carlo is developing a project that explores how far-right intellectual circles developed transnational networks through the personal connections of militants, the circulation of ideas, and the analysis of events, from the 1980s to 2020 in Europe. This is a strongly interdisciplinary project that arises from integrating theories and methodologies from comparative politics and transnational history.

Filipe is an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations and International Organization (IRIO) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen. Before joining IRIO, he worked at the University of Erfurt, where he also earned his PhD. His current research focuses on the history, theory and politics of international law, imperial Germany and maps. He has published widely on these topics and has co-edited two volumes: The Politics of Translation in International Relations (2021) and Mapping, Connectivity and the Making of European Empires (2021).  

Of Phantom Oceans and Mountain Ranges: Epistemic Authority, Cartographic Imaginaries and their Dis:connectivity Effects

At global dis:connect, Filipe is developing a project on phantom geographical features on 19th-century maps — a period when people considered themselves accurate and scientific. How was it possible that fictive mountain ranges and oceans appear on maps of that time? What kind of politics of knowledge was involved? What were the connective and disconnective effects of these phantom phenomena and how were they embedded in broader imaginaries about nature and society of the time? The project brings together discussions on global history and dis:connectivity, mapping and the sociology of knowledge.

Hadeel is a critical-theatre scholar and historian of SWANA countries. Her intellectual interest is theatre development as a mode of governance in Iraq. She worked as a senior research fellow and lecturer at Monash University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Baghdad. She has published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies and the Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World. As a fellow at gd:c, Hadeel will be working on her monograph, which examines how the confluence of global and transregional intellectual and artistic thought combined with state-building projects to form the glocal, Iraqi theatre-maker-citizen.  

Developing Theatre in Iraq: the (un)making of glocal Iraqi theatre makers Cultural Governance in Iraq from Al-Nahda to Neoliberal Age

Developing Theatre in Iraq outlines an innovative, empirically informed and theoretically driven conceptual model: the provisional glocal Iraqi theatre-maker-subject. This model captures the transnational history of Iraqi theatre, which has been determined by three major political and economic discourses: global and regional intellectual movements since the late-19th century, oil wealth since the early 20th century, and the creative economy since 2003. Grounded in governmentality theory, the book examines how the rise and fall of the glocal theatre-maker embodies the dispersed values of theatre in the educational and cultural policies designed to govern Iraq.

Harald is a professor of modern global history at ETH Zürich. Before joining ETH, he was an assistant professor for extra-European history at Jacobs University Bremen. He earned his PhD from the University of Heidelberg in 2000. His research interests include global and transnational history, the history of knowledge and the social and cultural history of 19th and 20th-century South Asia. His most recent research monograph is The YMCA in Late Colonial India: Modernization, Philanthropy and American Soft Power in South Asia.  

Bumpy Rides to Modernity: A Global History of Cycles and Cycling in South Asia (c. 1870 – 1990)

The project provides a fresh perspective on the transregional and transcultural history of the bicycle. Studying the symbolic and material significance of the bicycle on the Indian subcontinent complicates narratives that glorify Western techno-modernity in the Global South. The enhanced mobility provided by the new vehicle triggered fierce contestation and controversy around imperialism and decolonisation. The four case studies illuminate key moments in the first 100 years of cycling history in in South Asia and reveal the cultural meanings of the new technology in non-Western cultural and political constellations.

Sarah is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture and Global Relations at Western University. Her research addresses cultural diplomacy and museums, and she maintains an active curatorial practice focused on contemporary art. Her recent publications include the monograph Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America and the collection Museum Diplomacy: How Cultural Institutions Shape Global Engagement. She co-founded the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative and is a member of the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance.

Mobilizing the Museum: Diaspora Communities and Cultural Institutions

As a fellow at global dis:connect, Sarah will work on a monograph addressing the growth of diaspora museums as an institutional subsector in North America. Sarah’s project examines how diaspora communities are increasingly establishing new museums to shape discussions of their identity, heritage and migration journeys. Her research aims to understand how diaspora communities mobilise museums to advance heritage narratives, with a focus on global dis:connection, institutional critiques and cultural diplomacy.

Toby is an associate professor at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national academy of sciences. He specialises in Mediterranean history and studies northwest Africa in European cartography. He authored Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm and has co-edited three collections of essays. Liang has (co-)founded the Spain-North Africa Project, The Medieval Globe, and other academic organisations. He has lived in Taiwan, Syria, Spain and the USA.  

Where was Northwest Africa in the Age of Exploration?

Northwest Africa is absent in scholarship on the Age of Exploration. My project restores the area’s role as an intermediary between Europe, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. By analysing maps and texts from the 14th to 18th centuries, I am investigating how conceptualizations of northwest Africa were dis:connective. The phenomenon of blank space, adjacent to absence, silence and erasure, looms large, and I am developing a methodology to understand blanks, particularly how they shaped epistemological developments in European encounters with the world and ‘Others’.