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In Blog, Voices Blog, Voices Startseite

Everything moves, or does it? Empires and im:mobility

claire louise blaser
  In 1937, British India issued a series of postage stamps featuring the newly crowned King George VI. In them, the monarch shares the frame with an unlikely cast: a postman on foot, an ox cart, a horse-drawn carriage, a camel, a train, a steamer, a motorcar and an airplane (fig. 1). As David Arnold (Warwick) noted in his keynote for the workshop Empire and (im-)mobility in South and Southeast Asia, 19th and 20th centuries, this series depicts an ‘imperial ordering of mobilities’ in miniature: a visual narrative of progress from human- to animal- to machine-powered mobility that also reminds us, however, that these varied modes of transportation and communication were all connected.

Fig. 1: British India postage stamps, King George VI Transport Series, 1937. (Public domain)

Held in New Delhi on 6–7 February 2026 and co-organised by Siddharth Pandey (Munich/New Delhi) and Harald Fischer-Tiné (Munich/Zurich), both fellows at gd:c, the workshop invited participants to consider how mobility and immobility have been historically shaped, enabled and enforced in relation to one another. Over two days, scholars traced the movement of bicycles, planes, machines, seamen, writers and criminals across borderlands, oceans and empires. Relating the (post)colonial contexts of South and Southeast Asia to the British and Dutch Empires, the event also sought to open transimperial perspectives on the history of im:mobility. As Arnold observed in his keynote, historians of these regions have long studied movement through migration, trade, epidemics and the circulation of ideas. The workshop’s contribution therefore lay less in demonstrating that movement has a history than in exploring the analytical utility of im:mobility for historians in terms of what it can reveal about how empires were governed and infrastructures built, how people imagined space, and how bodies experienced the world.

Fig. 2: The organisers Siddharth Pandey (left) and Harald Fischer-Tiné (Photo: Siddharth Pandey)

 

Fig. 3: Siddharth Pandey (left) and Harald Fischer-Tiné (Photo: Abhimanyu Pandey).

Power: regimes of im:mobility

A central theme that emerged throughout was that im:mobility makes power visible. Several contributions tackled questions like who gets to move, who gets stopped, why and how; they focused on regulation and governance, revealing colonial rule as a project that relied on controlling motion. Yet, as several papers showed, that control was always incomplete. Colonial and postcolonial regimes alike had to contend with the fact that their visions of absolute regulation of their constituents’ im:mobility were often at odds with the practicalities of implementation. Michaela Dimmers (New Delhi) demonstrated this tension in her account of British Indian prisons. Convicts, she showed, were simultaneously highly mobile through no will of their own and intensely immobile through their confinement. The penal regime aspired to total control, but the everyday realities of prison show that im:mobility was constantly negotiated and compromised in practice. Abhimanyu Pandey’s (Ahmedabad) paper focused on how im:mobility is tied up with the notion of remoteness, viewing the latter as a governmental category. In Spiti, on the Indo-Tibetan border, colonial and postcolonial regimes alternately restricted and expanded access through mobility infrastructures in the interest of state sovereignty. Focusing on a different border, Vaibhav Bhardwaj (Delhi) traced how criminal mobility became a test case for fragile state sovereignty after the partition of British India. The movement of criminals between India and Pakistan challenged newly drawn borders, turning criminal mobility into a territorial dispute and a performance of sovereignty. Similarly invoking the instability and malleability of mobility regimes after partition, Naina Manjrekar (Bombay) showed how the recruitment and movement of seamen between India and Pakistan can be read as a clash between established colonial and newly forming postcolonial regimes of im:mobility. Shivangi Jaiswal (Venice) also reflected on links between labour and mobility through a case study of Indian workers who were sent to wartime Britain for technical training in the 1940s. Her contribution demonstrated how even a colonial-era regime that explicitly sought to enable both physical and social mobility was tightly controlled and socially stratified.

Knowledge: techno-mobility, infrastructures and im:mobile ideas

A second cross-cutting theme at the workshop concerned the relationship between mobility and knowledge. In the 19th and 20th centuries, mobility and its meanings were bound to new technologies that transformed how people moved in space. Several papers explored the emergence of this modern ‘techno-mobility’: im:mobility mediated by machines, infrastructures and technical expertise. Philipp Krauer (Zurich) told the story of the ‘Java bogie’, a locomotive component that travelled from Switzerland to the Dutch East Indies and eventually to colonial India. This case study unsettles narratives of direct technological diffusion from colonial metropoles to their peripheries by including lateral transcolonial conncections and European countries without colonial possessions. Andreas Greiner (Washington, DC) traced how interwar imperial aviation forced a renegotiation of airspace sovereignty. Here, inter-imperial technological rivalry ran up against the practicalities of planning intercontinental aerial routes, forcing empires such as the Dutch, British and French into ‘involuntary interdependence’, each reliant on access to the colonial skies of others. Oishi Dhar (Mānoa) zoomed in on Bengal, where over the 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian entrepreneurs adapted steam navigation technologies and ‘vernacularized’ them, transforming the steamship into a tool of swadeshi economic self-reliance and shipping ideas of anti-colonial assertion to new shores. Arnab Dutta (Groningen) examined the Greater India Society, whose intellectuals responded to imperial restrictions on Asian mobility by imagining alternative international migration regimes; the resulting visions of, for example, an ‘Asiatic Lebensraum’ reframed im:mobility in the anti-liberal logics of biologised civilisational units and population ecology. Teuku Reza Fadeli (Jakarta) and Harald Fischer-Tiné's papers both focused on an everyday technology of mobility, the bicycle, and considered how this technology was rendered governable in colonial Indonesia and India, respectively, by restricting and policing its use. At the same time, both contributions also showed how those restrictions, which in Fischer-Tiné’s framing constituted a form of ‘mobility inequality’, gradually eroded, leading to appropriations of cycling that challenged imperial and class hierarchies.

Fig. 4: gd:c goes mobile, discussing im:mobility 6000 km from headquarters (Photo: IIC Dehli).

Experience: embodied, imagined and symbolic im:mobilities

Throughout the workshop, participants repeatedly discussed who moved, how that movement (or its absence) felt and what symbolic value it carried. Several papers attended to mobility as a bodily experience, or how walking, cycling and even standing still leaves traces in muscle and memory. Fadeli and Fischer-Tiné also focused on such aspects in their papers. In urban colonial Indonesia, for example, police manuals prescribed posture and speed for cyclists: colonial governance there was enforced by regulating the behaviour of bodies in motion. In colonial India, European observers questioned whether ‘oriental’ bodies could master the ‘steel horse’. Both contributions made clear that im:mobility was not only a question of technology and governance, but also fundamentally of cultural and social symbolism. Siddharth Pandey explored this symbolism of movement, and how it could transform over time by shining light on a unique mode of mobility: ‘malling’, as residents of Shimla describe the act of walking on the town’s Mall Road. He explained how an activity that, in the colonial era, was a symbol of racial and social segregation, could become a more democratised leisurely practice in the postcolonial period, though it continued to be seen as a performance of social and political status. Mihir Jha (Delhi) showed how railway connectivity transformed the imagination of Chhotanagpur in colonial East India. New mobility infrastructure, he argued, brought upper-class travellers from Calcutta to the region, which opened a new way of reading the landscape — one that romanticised its pastoral and picturesque character, all while obscuring the industrialisation that made it accessible. Gregory Goulding (Philadelphia) traced mobility's symbolic life through the travelogues of Rahul Sankrityayan. The writer once styled himself a free-spirited wanderer challenging imperial restrictions on movement but later deployed the tropes of travel writing to incorporate the Himalayan region of Kinnaur into the imagined space of the new nation.

What else can im:mobility do for historians?

This workshop demonstrated that the mobilities paradigm, while certainly not novel, remains what Arnold called a ‘productive provocation’ for historians of South and Southeast Asia. Bringing together these diverse papers reinforced the value of thinking about the interconnections between different forms of im:mobility, as opposed to considering each mode or machine as an isolated case study. This perspective recentres marginalised aspects of mobility history. Arnold’s call to attend to animal mobility was a particularly salient example, laying out a convincing case for a multispecies history of im:mobility. Arnold also pointed to a central methodological challenge many papers grappled with implicitly: it is difficult for historians to capture the experience of im:mobility, as they mostly encounter it through mediated forms, like photographs, travelogues or stamps, each of which carries its own conventions and agendas. Several presenters illustrated their papers with striking photographs, making evident that visual technologies have long shaped how mobility is imagined and valued. Such images did not merely document im:mobility, but actively shaped its meanings, infusing it with symbolic values like modernity, authenticity and social status. The discussions also highlighted questions for future research. Participants pointed to the need to explore the relationship between mobility and immobility more explicitly and to attend to im:mobility’s historical stratification in terms of how journeys repeat or reinvent themselves with reference to previously charted paths. Finally, one form of im:mobility remained curiously underexplored: social im:mobility. In the concluding discussion, the concept of ‘motility’ – the potential for movement as a type of social capital – was suggested as a helpful approach to consider how the (in)ability to move shaped hierarchy, aspiration and identity in colonial and postcolonial societies.   Continue Reading
12 May 2026
In Blog, Voices Blog, Voices Startseite

Let’s talk contraception: two accounts of a single workshop

Ophelia Wach (the convener)
Contraception is neatly structured along the lines of gender. The meteoric rise of the pill in the 1960s has reinforced hormonal methods for those born as women as the heteronormative default for contraception worldwide. Feminist movements question not only the well-known side effects, but also the unequal distribution of contraceptive work. Bridging between autonomy and control, the workshop on contraceptive equity in practice at gd:c asked doctors, counsellors and users how they navigate the deeply gendered practice that is contraception. Our two authors paint two pictures of the discussions, one from the perspective of a research student (Samara Relkovic) and the other a curious journalist (Romy Hölzel). The dis:connectivity lies in the divergence between the equal roles of the two people involved in conception and the social norms that apply to them as gendered subjects when it comes to contraception.

Negotiating reproductive responsibility

samara relkovic

Photo by Christoffer Voigt

  Contraception is considered a private matter. It is decided between two people, organised as discreetly as possible, and is thus negotiated in seeming silence. Yet it is precisely this apparent privacy that conceals a central tension: while decisions about contraception are made in intimate contexts, their prerequisites, risks and consequences are anything but private. They are unequally distributed, politically framed and shaped by institutional conditions. In feminist theory, this shift is nothing new: ‘the personal is political’,[1] especially where questions of bodies, sexuality and reproduction are negotiated. Because contraception often appears as an individual issue related to self-determination, it is simultaneously outsourced to the private sphere, while its societal facets slip out of view. Who bears the risks? Who has access to knowledge? Who has access to methods, counselling, resources, and who does not? These questions concern not only individual bodies, but also interpersonal relationships and political structures, and thus the question of justice and equality. These very questions were addressed at the workshop on equitable contraception in practise, which took place in November 2025 at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect. It became clear that contraception magnifies gender roles, attributions of responsibility, economic logics and political priorities. Contraception was not discussed as a purely technical issue, but as interwoven processes of negotiation between individuals within societal structures, within political-regulatory institutions and within discourses.

Still no pill for men? Questioning the contraception gap

A central question of the workshop concerned the so-called ‘pill for men’. While the pill for women*[2] has been established as a contraceptive method since the 1960s and has become a standard method alongside the condom, the ‘pill for men’ has remained largely a utopia despite decades of research. At the same time, contraceptive methods such as the IUD and sterilisation for women* are becoming increasingly popular,[3] indicating growing demand for expanded contraceptive options – a trend that scholars associate with falling acceptance of the contraceptive pill. Meanwhile, the contraception gap between genders remains persists, with research and medical options for men*[4] remaining limited. This gap refers to the structural inequality in contraceptive options, the distribution of responsibility and the medical assessment of risk. While a wide range of medically recognised hormonal and mechanical contraceptive methods exist for women* – from the pill to IUDs to implants and sterilisation – men* are left with only condoms or vasectomies.[5] This structural inequality is due not merely to technical feasibility; it’s a symptom of the interplay of ethical, institutional and economic factors.

The politics of contraceptive risk evaluation or why responsibility remains gendered

One example of contraception for men is thermal contraception, in which the testicles are heated by external sources or daily elevation into the inguinal canal, significantly reducing sperm production. Smaller studies in France and Switzerland, alongside widespread self-experiments conducted outside official testing modalities, report effective contraception with comparatively minor side effects.[6] We lack large-scale clinical trials, reliable Pearl Index data and systematic long-term studies. Theoretical risks, such as a potential association between undescended testicles and cancer, are frequently cited as reasons against systematic research, despite the absence of solid evidence. In France, thousands of men* already use thermal contraception, sometimes under medical supervision, without regulatory approval. The discrepancy between actual practice and regulators’ caution reveals how the evaluation of contraceptive methods is strongly shaped by institutional priorities and risk perceptions and delimited to what is deemed investigable. Moreover, by prioritising pregnancy as the central metric of contraceptive risk, biomedical and regulatory systems reinforce structural gender biases, marginalising men’s* reproductive role and framing contraception as a predominantly female responsibility. A single-organism risk model prevails in pharmaceutical regulation. Benefits and side effects are assessed solely in relation to the body being treated. For male contraception, this means that hormonal and other body-altering methods are measured against a healthy male body; any deviation from this presumed ‘normal state’ is automatically regarded as problematic. By contrast, women’s* risks are evaluated primarily in light of potential pregnancy: side effects of hormonal methods, for instance, are deemed acceptable when weighed against the medical risks of pregnancy, thereby legitimising their market approval. A shared-risk model would instead assess benefits and harms relationally, relating male side effects to the health and social risks borne by a partner who could otherwise become pregnant, thus accounting for both individuals’ risks. If contraception were holistically understood as a shared responsibility in (hetero)sexual partnerships, men*, too, would be recognised as risk-bearing participants. Scholars advocate this relational model because it exposes how current standards obscure the distribution of risk between partners and thereby reproduce structural inequality.[7] Since regulators tend to neglect this relational model, health risks continue to be assessed differently depending on whose body is impacted. The result is a biomedical double-standard in which physically invasive interventions for men* appear ethically more problematic than comparable methods for women*.

Photo by Samara Relkovic

The contraception gap under the lens of invisible labour, heteronormativity and sexual health

The contraception gap is therefore not merely a technological deficit, but a product of divergent standards in biomedicine and ethics that materialise in everyday negotiations between sexual partners. It involves continuous planning, information management and risk assessment, much of which remains invisible. Coordinating appointments, researching potential side-effects, calculating costs and monitoring adherence all constitute a cognitive and emotional load. While contraception is formally framed as a shared responsibility, in practice this labour is often carried disproportionately by the woman*, reinforcing the contraception gap. Moreover, when reproductive health is normatively framed around pregnancy prevention, medical risk assessment and public discourse reduce contraception to a heterosexually defined practice. Other dimensions of sexual health are systematically neglected: prevention and testing strategies for sexually transmitted infections are treated as secondary, despite being relevant irrespective of gender, relationship structure and reproductive capacity. Queer lives and sexualities are marginalised, as dominant contraceptive discourses remain organised around heteronormative assumptions of pregnancy risk. This narrow focus matters. While reproductive risks continue to be framed predominantly as pregnancy risks, European public health authorities have reported sustained increases in bacterial STIs such as syphilis and gonorrhoea in recent years.[8] The shift in attention towards hormonal pregnancy prevention, coupled with the relative neglect of barrier-based protective strategies, therefore constitutes not just a discursive imbalance but an epidemiological concern. A contraceptive policy oriented towards the management of reproduction fails to address central aspects of collective sexual health and simultaneously reproduces a heteronormative constriction of sexual responsibility. Taken together, these dynamics reveal the contraception gap as a structural phenomenon rather than a mere technological absence. It is sustained by regulatory standards, research priorities and entrenched assumptions about whose body is expected to bear reproductive risk. As long as biomedical evaluation remains individualised, pregnancy prevention dominates sexual-health discourse, and the mental load of contraception is unevenly distributed, responsibility will fall asymmetrically. Closing the contraception gap therefore requires not only new methods, but a shift towards a genuinely relational understanding of reproductive risk and shared responsibility. [1] The slogan is attributed to second-wave radical-feminist Carol Hanisch. [2] This term refers to women and people who can become pregnant, and the associated contraceptives for ovulation suppression. [3] See the recent survey by the Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG) on sexual education, contraception and family planning: Faktenblatt: Sexualaufklärung, Verhütung und Familienplanung, Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Aufklärung, 7, https://shop.bioeg.de/pdf/DL-20251027-1600.pdf. [4] The term men* refers to men and sperm-producing people. [5] Although the condom is the most widely used contraceptive method in Germany and often reflects shared responsibility in practice, its comparatively limited efficacy under typical use means that an additional method is required anyway. [6] See Samuel Joubert et al., 'Thermal male contraception: A study of users’ motivation, experience, and satisfaction', Andrology 10, no. 8 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1111/andr.13264; Jean-Claude Soufir, 'Hormonal, chemical and thermal inhibition of spermatogenesis: contribution of French teams to international data with the aim of developing male contraception in France', Basic and Clinical Andrology 27, no. 3 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1186/s12610-016-0047-2. [7] Christopher ChoGlueck, 'Still no pill for men? Double standards & demarcating values in biomedical research', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 91 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.11.010. [8] 'STI cases continue to rise across Europe', European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2025, accessed 19 February 2026, https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/sti-cases-continue-rise-across-europe.
bibliography
ChoGlueck, Christopher. 'Still no pill for men? Double standards & demarcating values in biomedical research'. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 91 (2022): 66-76. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.11.010. Faktenblatt: Sexualaufklärung, Verhütung und Familienplanung. Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Aufklärung. https://shop.bioeg.de/pdf/DL-20251027-1600.pdf. Joubert, Samuel, Jessica Tcherdukian, Roger Mieusset and Jeanne Perrin. 'Thermal male contraception: A study of users’ motivation, experience, and satisfaction'. Andrology 10, no. 8 (2022): 1500-10. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/andr.13264. Soufir, Jean-Claude. 'Hormonal, chemical and thermal inhibition of spermatogenesis: contribution of French teams to international data with the aim of developing male contraception in France'. Basic and Clinical Andrology 27, no. 3 (2017). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1186/s12610-016-0047-2. 'STI cases continue to rise across Europe'. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2025, accessed 19 February 2026, https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/sti-cases-continue-rise-across-europe.

Responsibility, trust, contraception

romy hölzel
  ‘Contraception is about far more than just means and methods — it's about decision-making, responsibility and justice,’ says Samara Relkovic.[1] Murmurs of agreement ripple through the rows. The participants, a diverse mix of experts, students and people from other fields, are busily taking notes, nodding in recognition or simply watching attentively as the two workshop leaders, Samara Relkovic and Ophelia Wach, deliver their opening speech for the workshop Equal Contraception in Practice. The workshop, which took place at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, focussed on a topic that is often swept under the rug, taboo or dismissed as a ‘women's issue’: contraception. Over the course of eight hours, participants gained concrete knowledge from experts in various fields from sociology and gynaecology to activist organisations. With these diverse and interdisciplinary insights, participants engaged in discussion rounds on various aspects of contraception, developing both expertise and a better sense for the subject matter — a matter that most people will face sooner or later.

Photo by Christoffer Voigt

Fabian Hennig provided the first intervention, considering developments and research in contraception, such as hormonal and thermal methods, as part of his dissertation. The mood became more relaxed, and smiles spread across the participants' faces as Hennig presented his first slide showing current common contraceptive methods for men, which turns out to be rather short: ‘Condom, vasectomy,’ it read. Fortunately, the list of contraceptive methods for men currently in testing is somewhat longer. Hennig explains various methods to the audience, from sperm flow blockage to vasectomy to hormonal and thermal approaches. A ‘pill for men,’ as Hennig put it (though without much enthusiasm for the term), seems to have stagnated in research. ‘Historically speaking, men weren't really trusted to take the pill daily’ — followed by amused giggling that ran through the rows of participants. But then the atmosphere became more tense, with almost a hint of anger and frustration in the air, as Hennig explained that the side effects that might occur for men, which were identified while testing this pill, were considered ‘unreasonable’. The mood swings, depression and loss of libido were deemed too great a risk. ‘With male contraception, there are unrealistically high expectations — namely zero risk’, Hennig said. Further, the pressure in Germany to advance research in this direction is unfortunately not yet insistent enough. The almost palpable frustration of those present is interrupted — it's time for the first breakout session. In the first breakout session, participants with overlapping areas of interest came together. One or two experts also joined the discussion rounds to provide input, though even participants without particular expertise engaged enthusiastically in the exchange. Under the topic of  Where is the progress?, one of the small groups exchanged opinions and thoughts relating to education: ‘What's missing is the impetus to question the status quo and the entire system in such a way that you think: “What can we do differently?”‘ said Louis Happel, a student and workshop participant. Gynaecologist Cornelia Höß also noted regarding education: ‘The topic of contraception should be part of young people's upbringing and should be discussed equally’. In schools and at home, contraception should not be taboo but actively addressed. The goal of the group work — getting to know other workshop participants and consciously engaging with the topic of contraception while simultaneously gaining new knowledge — seemed to have been fully achieved in the first session. The second presentation came from Louisa Lorenz, an education coordinator for sexuality and society. Her short presentation focussed on the topic of responsibility in contraception, which is famously one-sided: ‘Women are the main bearers of responsibility for pregnancy prevention’, Lorenz explained. The audience nodded in agreement. When Lorenz discussed one of her slides showing that men apparently massively overestimate their own engagement and responsibility regarding contraception, the listeners broke into brief, rather irritated laughter, as if the entire room were soberly shaking its head. The weight of responsibility for contraception that women usually shoulder became particularly clear when Lorenz listed the various steps necessary for the contraceptive method one by one or the preferred approach to be used. From going to the gynaecologist to constantly remembering to have the pill, condom or other means along when needed, the list is long. ‘Then you really notice why the burden is so high,’ said Lorenz, and the participants nodded in agreement. The third breakout session also revolved around the theme of responsibility. In the context of gender-specific differences in contraception, a lively discussion took place in one of the groups, with the focus not only on responsibility, but also on trust: ‘Contraception is very much about trust. Regarding contraceptive methods for men, women are confronted with the question: “Can I trust my partner, even when the most serious consequences rest with me?”‘ said Christoffer Voigt from the European Network for Shared Contraception. The group found that trust, along with a certain level of knowledge, education and, as banal as it may sound, money, are the most crucial prerequisites for contraception to proceed as fairly and equitably as possible between genders. But something else is needed too: communicating with each other, as the groups agreed. The negotiation of contraception is also based on compromises. As diligently as the workshop participants discussed, took notes and though, their concentration inevitably began to wane after eight hours. And yet everyone gathered for a final breakout session, this time on the topic of research and development. Even after almost eight hours of active participation, the energy was high, which is thanks to what Hennig reported in the ‘Research and Development’ group about ongoing research. Hennig talked about the barriers that are sometimes put in the way of developing male contraceptives. From lacking funds to lacking demand: research faces numerous restrictions. The conversation became particularly charged when it returned to side effects. ‘For other medical developments and research, the standard regarding side effects is not as high as for contraceptives for men’, Hennig explained. A statement that revived everyone again. After a day full of new knowledge, exchange, discussions and — as is to be expected with such a topic — anger and frustration, the workshop Equal Contraception in Practice came to an end. Despite visible exhaustion, it was obvious that all the education had stirred something in the participants’ minds. And even though the issues surrounding contraception can certainly drive one to despair, there remains hope. As workshop leader Ophelia Wach put it, ‘There is movement, even if there are always setbacks’.   [1] The text was originally published in German, and all quotations have been translated. Continue Reading
31 March 2026
In Blog, Voices Blog, Voices Startseite

A workshop on an unwritten history: decolonising architectural education in Africa

Peter Seeland
  As a discipline, architecture is just starting to face critical postcolonial discourses in its treatment of its own history as well as in current challenges of material, ecological and social practices on global and local scales. These challenges pervaded African schools of architecture in the 1950s to 1980s, as they were often founded for the sake of political decolonisation, and they continue to influence built environments, architectural knowledge and schooling. With their goals of decolonising architecture and urban planning through economic independence, cultural diversity and local, unsuppressed knowledge, these schools are ripe for research. The Munich workshop, hosted by the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis: connect (gd:c) and the Architekturmuseum of the Technical University of Munich, sought to catalyse such research, focussing on the decolonial effects of the schools from their inceptions to the present. The workshop took place in the Pavillon 333 — an exhibition space in the centre of Munich built by students to showcase art and design.[1] The structure itself challenges established manners of architectural knowledge production and classical hierarchies in universities, and its designers sought to develop architecture as a tool for dealing with (de)colonisation.[2] Therefore, the location and the workshop were in dialogue with each other.

Excerpt from the thesis of K.H. Tissou, the first female architecture student at EAMAU Lomé, 1984. Image: EAMAU.

After being welcomed by Christopher Balme and Andres Lepik, the participants heard Nikolai Brandes's opening address, where he emphasised the crucial role of African faculty in architectural history and the ethical need to overcome marginalisation in the canon. The workshop was deliberately conceived to counter such marginalisation through discourse and learning. The first paper by Abdé Batchati from the Technical University of Berlin treated Power, Pedagogy, and the Myth of Neutrality in Architectural Education. A Decolonising Critique and Imagining Futures for Architectural and Spatial Education. Batchati showed how the Western canon predominates in global architecture education and how this affects hierarchies of knowledge in a (post)colonial context. Consistent with the overarching theme of how to learn and teach about space fairly beyond the university, Batchati was attempting to reinvent a less hierarchical pedagogy, invoking the research of Sara Ahmed, Grada Kilomba and the Matri-Architecture Project.[3] Further, Batchati shared her experiences with these issues in her own curation and research in the context of Matri-Architecture. Nikolai Brandes followed Batchati with a talk on Schools of Architecture in Africa. Mapping a Field of Research. Brandes outlined the history African schools of architecture and the emergence of independent national schools with reference to the schools in Lomé, Togo, and Maputo, Mozambique, founded in the 1970s and 1980s. They engage in several of the same topics, such as training local students, ambivalence towards the rediscovery of African traditions, searching for African identities and decolonising the urban to take a more central position. Nikolai discussed these issues vividly, especially the role of the rural in localising African architecture. Elio Trusiani from the University of Camerino closed the initial panel with a paper on The Historical Experience of the Faculty of Architecture in Maputo. Trusiani traced the history of Italian engagement in Maputo using the example of the Faculdade de Arquitectura e Planeamento Físico, which was founded in 1986. Since Trusiani spent several years there, he reported from first-hand experience how Italian and Mozambican students and teachers developed new forms of architectural education together. Nancy Demerdash from Detroit's College for Creative Studies opened the second panel with her thoughts on La Formation de L’Architecte. American Interventionism, Interdisciplinary, and Development in Postcolonial Tunisian Architecture Curricula. She described the tension between traditional indigenous approaches and modern-Western teaching methods in 1950s French Tunisia and how architecture served as an instrument of French socialisation and politicisation, especially in the early years of the American Architecture Schools in Tunisia. Further, she traced the growing recognition of indigenous knowledge and a more social and technical focus, which led to a more inclusive idea of architecture during the American intervention. Lund University's Erik Sigge presented a paper on Negotiating Epistemological Grounds for Architecture Education. The Ethio-Swedish Institute of Building Technology in Addis Ababa, 1954-1973. Sigge understands the history of architectural education in the institute, which grew into the School of Addis Abba, in the broader frame of Swedish intervention in Ethiopia. Here Western knowledge is transferred to Ethiopia, and local knowledge is reframed in Western categories. But in the case of the institute, he also diagnosed a special method of synthesising traditional local techniques and Western-modern ideas through an ethos of open expertise. Contemporary bamboo architecture is but one example. In this case, architectural education serves as a foundation for greater self-sufficiency. Mark Olweny of Auburn University and the Uganda Martyrs University discussed Africanisation of Architectural Education. Postcolonial Opportunities, Trajectories, and Missteps in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Starting with the Mulungushi Club as decolonisation thinktank, he described how the club's manifestos led to massive changes in architectural knowledge production to include female and indigenous architects in Uganda. A focus on engineering and a lack of humanities along with a mainly male faculty and student body diverted attention from social perspectives and underrepresented discourses on postcolonialism and equality. The discussion highlighted the lack of such knowledge in publications and archives. The panel closed with a visit to the Trees, Time, Architecture! exhibition curated by Kristina Pujkilovic in the Architekturmuseum of the Technical University of Munich. The exhibition rendered the entanglement of architecture, globalisation and climate crises in of (post)colonial discourse obvious. That evening, Brian Valente-Quinn of the University of Colorado Boulder and gd:c introduced Nzinga Mboup as the keynote speaker with her talk on Bioclimatic Design in Senegal. Lessons from the École d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Dakar and the Work of Worofila. Mboub reflected on her past and how it led her to research, teach and practice architecture in Senegal. Taking Worofila Street in Dakar as an example, she pointed out the importance of traditional architecture and the collective interest in it. The African climate serves as starting point for Senegalese architecture, as it meets local needs with natural materials and passive designs. Unlike Western architectural ideas, such techniques yield effective and sustainable buildings of earth, clay and sand as traditional natural resources. Their cooling properties are ideal for the African heat, and they can help democratise architectural knowledge. But publishing such knowledge remains crucial for its development and propagation. Panel 3 dealt with Transforming Institutions, starting with Kuukuwa Manful from the University of Michigan discussing The Formalisation and Unformalisation of Architectural Training in the Gold Coast and Ghana. He opened with a 1706 print of Elmina Castle, which, as a fortress of the British colonisers, represented political and economic power and repression in Ghana. Further, she described the history of architectural education in Ghana not as linear development but as diverse processes of ‘unformalisation’ in reaction to the Western formalisation focused on a formal engineering approach. ‘Unformalisation’ means returning to traditional knowledge, methods and architectural training. Lisa André, a member the chair of unlearning in Munich, continued the theme with Learning to Unlearn Architecture. The Chair of Unlearning as a Critical Student Practice. First, she pointed out the discriminatory potential of architecture as a built manifestation of society and the urgent need to face this problem. André's main question is: who do we design architecture for? The chair of unlearning searches for answers. As an educational and activist programme, it challenges knowledge, hierarchies, universalised standards and privileges in architecture training. Unlearning colonial suppression and discrimination are how the chair teaches anti-colonial theory. The final discussion reinforced that the history of African architectural education remains to be written. So, the workshop shed light on the African architecture schools’ history and served also as an experiment probing relations between history and the present. The workshop seems therefore like a starting point for further research and engagement digging deeper in the still marginalized subject. [1] 'About 333', Department of Architecture | TUM School of Engineering and Design, accessed 16 May 2025, https://www.pavillon333.de/en/ueber-333/. [2] 'DesignBuild at TUM', Department of Architecture | TUM School of Engineering and Design, accessed May 16 2025, https://www.arc.ed.tum.de/lek/designbuild/concept/. [3] 'matri-archi(tecture)', matri-archi(tecture), accessed 16 May 2026, https://www.matri-archi.ch/.

Bibliography

'About 333'. Department of Architecture | TUM School of Engineering and Design, accessed 16 May 2025, https://www.pavillon333.de/en/ueber-333/. 'DesignBuild at TUM'. Department of Architecture | TUM School of Engineering and Design, accessed May 16 2025, https://www.arc.ed.tum.de/lek/designbuild/concept/. 'matri-archi(tecture)'. matri-archi(tecture), accessed 16 May 2026, https://www.matri-archi.ch/.
citation information:
Seeland, Peter, 'A workshop on an unwritten history: decolonising architectural education in Africa', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 17 March 2026, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/03/17/a-workshop-on-an-unwritten-history-decolonising-architectural-education-in-africa/.
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17 March 2026
In Blog, Voices Blog, Voices Startseite

A pillow for collective dormancy

işıl eğrikavuk
I arrived at global dis:connect as an artist fellow in the fall of 2025. Being an artist and academic, I often find myself operating between these two worlds: one is more open to process, play and experimentation, and the other is usually more precise and well-planned. While I had already been asked — and had sent off — by mid-summer the title of the presentation I was to give at gd:c in November, I was not sure what exactly I would want to present to my colleagues in Munich. Should I have continued my ongoing garden project, which I had been running with my students at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) for the last four years, or should I have used the limited time available to enter a new domain and work on something else? First, a little background on my practice: I am an artist with a background in performance art and community art practices. My work often involves collaborations with various groups of people — artists and non-artists — as well as my students. I have also been teaching art for almost twenty years, the last eight of which have been in Berlin. As a member of UdK’s teaching faculty, I started a garden project in 2021 together with my students, called the other garden. the other garden resulted from several personal and collective experiences. First, I am the only non-European instructor in my faculty and sometimes find myself on the wrong side of the language barrier. Second, there is a lack of diversity and inclusivity programs for newcomers like me. Finally, our building lacks a café or social space for the students and staff. After battling some bureaucracy, we set up the garden, where my students and I are growing non-native wild plants (weeds), which are othered in the anthropocentric plant hierarchy. It soon became both a garden behind our faculty building located on Mierendorffstraße and a classroom and community space for us. There, we began to hold our classes, organise artist talks, cook, eat, experiment with art and talk about otherness — both within and among humans as well as non-human beings. In only a few years, this little area has become a much larger community than I imagined, with now over a hundred students who have experienced being part of it.

Fig. 1-2: the other garden (image: Işıl Eğrikavuk)

    Yet,when I arrived in Munich, I did not know what a green city I would find, nor was I exactly aware of the location of gd:c. Walking in the mornings from the English Garden to my office, looking outside from my desk during the day onto the Maximilian Park, I felt surrounded by a much larger green environment and was able to take more time to notice its changes day by day. One of my initial ideas was to see if I could start another garden, perhaps in the backyard of the gd:c building. But soon after arriving in Munich, I realised that there would neither be enough time nor the right moment during my six-month stay in the city. I also noticed that it was already October, and the turn of the season was obvious in the city’s flora. The weather was starting to get chilly; trees were shedding their leaves, and the colors were turning crimson, then yellow and brown. There was a sense of slowing down and stillness, almost like the preparation we humans do before going to bed: getting rid of heavy clothes, cleaning up and getting ready to quiet down. It was clearly not the right time to start a garden. I began to spend longer moments just observing the park’s edge from my desk, tracing the slow colour changes of the trees. Jenny Odell calls this kind of attentiveness ‘doing nothing’: not idleness, but radical presence. ‘To do nothing is to hold yourself still’, she writes, ‘so that you can perceive what is actually there’.[1] In those moments, I was not inactive. I was practicing a different form of engagement, like the trees, one that did not seek to produce or prove, but simply to be.

Fig. 3: a gd:c autumn (Işıl Eğrikavuk, November 2024)

Wintering

Around the same time, I started reading Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.[2] It was inspiring to read both May’s personal story of wintering in life as a metaphor for difficult times, as well as her research on strategies and rituals of coping with cold weather in other geographies and of her own experiments with it, especially with the cold sea in winter. May discovered swimming, or cold dipping, as a way of making peace with the harshness of the winter. This ongoing experiment generated its own community of like-minded friends and new acquaintances who celebrated the winter instead of recoiling from it. We were not necessarily in the winter months yet, but we were moving toward them. The trees were clearly preparing for their own wintering cycle, recognising their need for rest and retreat. It was the human-made homes, offices and buildings that separated us from this both by protecting us from the coming cold and by disconnecting us from what was happening around us. The daily rhythm of looking at computer screens, preparing another paper or talk and the self-induced pressure to write was constant. Academia does not have time for wintering. We were used to — and even willing — to continue producing without making time for rest. But what if resting, I thought, just like dormancy in the plant world, is not absence but a different kind of presence: a quiet form of survival, preparation and transformation? As Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests in Braiding Sweetgrass, plants model a wisdom of rest and regeneration, teaching us to honour cycles and recognise the value of dormancy.[3] In the garden, dormancy is never a failure or inactivity. It is a pause that makes growth possible, it is a surrender to the season that honours time, energy and environmental rhythm. Trees do not resist winter; they embrace it, slowing their metabolism, conserving energy, drawing inward. Their apparent stillness holds unseen labor, the storing of sugars, the thickening of bark, the quiet preparation for what’s to come. In contrast, the institutional calendar asks us to bypass these organic pauses, rather to produce in all seasons as if the soil never needed to remain uncultivated. But perhaps, like the trees, we humans too need seasons of dormancy. Not to disappear, but to process, to replenish, to wait with intention. In that sense, wintering is not just metaphor,  it’s an ecological imperative.

A common dormancy experience

With those thoughts in mind, I started to imagine a collective experience of dormancy — or rather, an invitation to it. A cultural motif appeared in my thoughts, originating from my country, Turkey, where newlyweds are presented with a two-person pillow upon marriage. There is also a saying that reflects the object: Bir yastıkta kocayın, which means ‘May you age on the same pillow together’. I began sketching what a pillow for my academic community might be like. A tall pillow of several meters, where we could rest our heads together for a moment and doze off in the building where we work. How could we connect to one another while disconnecting from our work? I started toying with the idea. First, I took a German-size pillow from the house where I was staying. German pillows are notorious among foreigners for their size — usually 80x80 cm. I went outside into our garden and began to fill it with fallen leaves from the horse chestnut trees. I wanted to put dried leaves in this pillow to create some form of commonality between our tree-kin and our dormancy experiences. To sleep while being accompanied by living organisms — to be closer to the outside, beyond our walls. After making my first pillow and filling it with leaves, I started photographing myself in the office building, sleeping in different places: at my desk, on the stairs, in the kitchen, under the Einstein painting in our foyer…

Fig. 4-7: an experiment in photography and research (Işıl Eğrikavuk, November 2024)

By mid-November, as my talk was approaching, I decided to really make a giant pillow, which I could fill together with my colleagues as a performance. After some searching, I found a Turkish tailor who agreed to sew my two-meter-long pillow from old bed linens. Together we made the pillow. Below, you can see images from our collective pillow-filling and leaf-picking performance, which we executed at the end of my talk and to which I invited my colleagues and guests. Before we did that, I showed them a video of myself sleeping on my first pillow in the gd:c backyard, for which I also wrote this text:

Dear you,

Good morning. Good night. Good morning. Wake up. Are you awake? How did you sleep last night? Was it a deep sleep, or did you wake up in the middle of the night? Do you dream? What was your last dream? The leaves are falling down. I can see them falling one by one from the window of my office. Sometimes I hear machines collecting the leaves, making the streets all clean and tidy for us humans. When I went foraging a few weeks ago, our guide told us that dropping their leaves is like emptying their guts for the trees. They become lighter and calmer, ready to rest. We have a maple tree here in the garden, and a couple of beech trees. My plant-identifying app tells me we have a Turkish hazelnut, but I don’t believe its 58% accuracy. It stands on its own, and I mostly worry about it being alone. I keep waking up in the middle of the night these days. Between 4–6 a.m. is a half-dormant time for my body. I try to meditate, but can’t fall back asleep. On those days, my eyes close and my head becomes heavy — sometimes hard to carry. What’s a garden when it is dormant? When life simply shifts underground and we, the outsiders, can’t see much happening? What happens when the work of being a plant becomes invisible — its activity slowing down, yet continuing in other forms? What happens when a tree is quietly resting? Is resting a detour, when one is paused, storing for the next day, month, or coming season? Dear you, do you ever feel dormant? When was your last dormancy? Dear you, do you want a rest? What if we rested together — communally, like trees? Dear you, can we connect with one another through being dormant, with our different forms, bodies, and lengths of rest?

Fig. 8-11: a Collective Dormancy Experience, performance by Işıl Eğrikavuk and participants, gd:c, (Işıl Eğrikavuk, November 2024)

Dormancy as resistance

To be dormant is not to disappear. It is to resist the demand to constantly produce, to perform alertness, to stay visible. In a world and an academy that celebrates speed, output and accumulation, choosing to slow down is a quiet act of rebellion. Dormancy is resistance to timelines that don’t fit our bodies, to institutional rhythms that forget we are made of cycles, not straight lines. Like the plants in our garden, like the trees outside the gd:c offices, we too need time to retreat, to shed, to lie fallow. The giant pillow we filled together was not only a resting place; it was a proposition, a shared pause, an embodied refusal. A collective reminder that rest, disconnectivity and absence is presence. It is care. It is preparation. It is political. [1] Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2019), 11. [2] Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (New York: Riverhead Books, 2020). [3] Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013).
bibliography
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013. May, Katherine. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. Odell, Jenny. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2019.
how to cite:
Eğrikavuk, Işıl, 'A pillow for collective dormancy', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 3 February 2026, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/02/03/a-pillow-for-collective-dormancy/.
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3 February 2026
In Voices News, Voices Startseite

New Publication: Photo Shops. Global Infrastructures of Photography (FOTOGESCHICHTE 178)

Burcu Dogramaci, Director of global dis:connect, has co-edited the new special issue Fotogeschäfte. Globale Infrastrukturen der Fotografie together with Helene Roth, now published as FOTOGESCHICHTE 178.

The issue explores photo shops as key infrastructures of photography that have so far received little systematic attention in photographic research. Beyond retail spaces, photo shops functioned as hubs of technical innovation, aesthetic exchange, and social interaction—particularly before the digital age. They played a crucial role in shaping photographic practices, mediating knowledge, and facilitating transnational connections, including in contexts of exile and migration.

Bringing together transnational, (post-)colonial, and (post-)imperial perspectives, the contributions expand and challenge established narratives of photography’s history.

📄 Downloads:
– Editorial (sample): https://asw-verlage.de/getmedia.php/_media/202511/14796v0-orig.pdf
– Title information: https://asw-verlage.de/katalog/fotogeschichte_heft_178-2745.html

Congratulations on this important publication!

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16 January 2026
In News, Voices News, Voices Startseite

New issue of static (4.1 | 2025) published

We are pleased to announce the publication of the new issue of static (4.1 | 2025), dedicated to the theme of cultural infrastructure. Its cover features a zine created during last year’s summer school — a reminder of the DIY and often dissident forms of cultural expression that circulate outside commercial or state-controlled channels.

In this issue, we explore cultural infrastructures in many forms: from Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s Atlantique as a “filmic zine”, to African schools of architecture, to art historian and gallerist Godula Buchholz and her role in linking South American and German art worlds. Artist fellow Işıl Eğrikavuk closes the issue with a reflection on dormancy as a quiet resistance to academic acceleration.

Read the issue online: 👉 https://static.ub.uni-muenchen.de
For print copies, contact: gdc@lmu.de

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19 November 2025
In News, Voices News, Voices Startseite

Opening of the Exhibition “Sweet Homeland. German-Turkish Life in Art” – Kunstmuseum Ahlen, 15/11/25-01/03/26

Burcu Doğramacı curates — together with Marta Smolińska — the exhibition “Sweet Homeland. German-Turkish Life in Art“ at Kunstmuseum Ahlen.

What is home? A place or a landscape? A language or music? A smell or a taste? And what does it mean when you have to find a new home? Since the recruitment agreement signed in 1961, many Turks have come to Germany to work here. At the time, they were called “guest workers”, although they usually experienced little hospitality. For many of them, leaving for a time became an attempt to find a permanent home in a foreign culture.

People from Turkey also came to the Westphalian Ruhr region and the city of Ahlen from the 1960s onwards to find work at the Westfalen colliery. Many of them stayed even after the mine closed in 2000 and have long since become part of the town's society. For this reason, the Ahlen Art Museum is taking an in-depth look at artistic reflections on migrant experiences.

In an extensive group exhibition with 16 renowned artists, the focus is on memories of what was left behind at home, hopes associated with a new beginning in a foreign country and the difficult commuting between different cultures.

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18 November 2025
In News, Voices News, Voices Startseite

Susanne Quitmann wins the 2025 Prize of the German Historical Institute London

global dis:connect postdoctoral researcher Susanne Quitmann has been awarded the Prize of the German Historical Institute London 2025 for her dissertation “Reconceptualising Voice: An Exploratory Case Study of British Child Migrants (1869–1970)”, completed at LMU Munich. This recognition marks the third distinction for her dissertation, which has also received the Society for the History of Children and Youth Dissertation Award and the German Association for British Studies Dissertation Award. In her thesis, Quitmann reconceptualises voice as an analytical tool to study marginalised people in history. Using the example of British child migrants sent to Canada and Australia between 1869 and 1970, she explores how they navigated and communicated their experiences and constructed new identities within highly asymmetrical power structures. Her approach broadens the understanding of “voice” beyond speech and writing, attending also to silences, music, and bodily performance as meaningful forms of expression. The GHIL Prize is awarded annually for outstanding doctoral theses in German or British history, colonial history, or British–German relations. It carries a €1,000 award and is formally presented at the GHIL Annual Lecture. Continue Reading
17 November 2025
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Julian Warner appointed professor at the HMDK Stuttgart

We are delighted to share that our former fellow Julian Warner (fellow 2024/25) has been appointed professor of performance and artistic research at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart (HMDK). Julian Warner is a German-British artist and curator. Before joining HMDK, he served as artistic director of the Brechtfestival Augsburg (2023–2025) and curated the Festival der KulturRegion Stuttgart (2022). He has designed performances and festivals for institutions such as Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and Münchner Kammerspiele. During his fellowship at global dis:connect, Julian co-organised a workshop entitled The Grand Method. Brecht without guarantees together with Prof. Dr. Moritz Ege (UZH). The event, held as part of the Brechtfestival Augsburg, explored Brecht’s notion of the Grand Method as a practical doctrine and tool for creative and political action under changing social conditions. In line with Warner’s curatorial vision for the festival, the workshop brought together scholars, artists and curators to reflect on what it means to act without guarantees in cultural and political practice. We look back fondly on this riveting event and the fruitful collaboration that made it possible. Congratulations, Julian, and all the best for this exciting next chapter! Continue Reading
30 October 2025
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Voices from global dis:connect: Four New Fellow Interviews

We’re excited to announce the release of four new interview videos now available on our YouTube channel. In these conversations, former fellows at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect share insights into their research, artistic projects, and personal journeys. Each interview offers a unique perspective on global dis:connections across disciplines and geographies.

Frances Steel
Professor of History at the University of Otago, Frances Steel discusses her project on the history of refrigeration and its role in shaping the colonial Pacific’s food trade. Her research uncovers how frozen meat and dairy exports helped transform New Zealand — and to a lesser extent, Australia — into the “farm of the empire.”
👉 Watch the interview

Nadia von Maltzahn
Principal investigator of the ERC project Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad (LAWHA), based at the Orient-Institut Beirut, Nadia explores the circulation of artists and artworks from Lebanon since 1943. In the interview, she reflects on her academic path and her book-in-progress at global dis:connect.
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Yolanda Gutiérrez
Choreographer, video artist, curator, and producer Yolanda Gutiérrez shares her creative journey and the evolution of her Urban Bodies Project Munich. Her work explores the intersections of body, space, and migration through collaborative performance.
👉 Watch the interview

Shane Boyle
Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, Shane Boyle introduces his research on artistic responses to global logistics. At global dis:connect, he investigates how artists use tactics like blockade and sabotage to confront the infrastructures of global trade and extractivism.
👉 Watch the interview 

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3 June 2025