Research Projects
- MigOst - Ostdeutsche Migrationsgeschichte selbst erzählen (March 2021 to February 2024, with TU Dresden and DaMOst). East Germany also has a migration history: GDR contract workers, students, political emigrants, later ethnic German repatriates, Jewish refugees and war refugees from Yugoslavia, Syria and Afghanistan, and also children of binational couples. Nevertheless, the role of migrants in East Germany is hardly discussed. Even in research, West German immigration history dominates the discourse. The MigOst project creates opportunities for a joint discussion of (one's own) migration history. It aims to make the participation of migrants in East Germany more visible and to broaden the one-dimensional mainstream society perspective on migration, thus paving the way for more diverse (urban) histories.
- Study: Transnational Families of Refugees in Brandenburg: Social Protection, Forced Immobility and Care Relations (Seed-funded, 2018–2020, with Niklaas Bause). The study examines the role of family relationships in the social protection of refugees. It focuses on the interplay of formal and informal social protection of male and female refugees and their protection strategies in the context of family constellations, which include family members in countries of origin and third countries. The study involves biographical interviews with both refugees and experts in the field of social security in selected cities in the state of Brandenburg.
Project: Cottbus Postkolonial und Postsozialistisch (Postcolonial and Postsocialist Cottbus) As a result of the project-seminar "Postcolonial and Postsocialist Cottbus", which was held by the Chair of Intercultural Studies in the summer semester 2018, students and teachers of BTU have conceptualized a historical and political city tour through Cottbus. The seminar was held by Manuel Peters and Miriam Trzeciak and aimed at finding colonial and socialist traces in Cottbus. Together, the participants searched for places of memory that work as examples for the postcolonial and postsocialist history of Cottbus but are not part of the city's collective memory. In a nutshell, approaches of postcolonialism and postsocialism assume that colonialism and socialism are not simply located in the past. Moreover, hegemonic structures still shape existences, practices and forms of knowledge in the present. Against this background, the project is an attempt to better understand the articulations of postcolonial and postsocialist practices and forms of knowledge in the present by reconstructing their history. Our goals are to further develop the tour, to make it available online and to regularly offer it to students and citizens of the city.
- You can find the research projects here.
- Open dialogue events in times of right-wing mobilization – the example of Cottbus' civic dialogues (research project on the trajectories of civic dialogues in Cottbus)
- Diversity in rural areas of the (new) eastern federal states of Germany: LGBT* in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg – yesterday and today. In-Visibile challenges, discrimination and resistances. A research and exhibition project in collaboration with the club “Lola für Demokratie in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern”
- (Gender reflective) right-wing extremism prevention: scientific support of the work of the Amadeu Antonio foundation’s department on gender and right-wing extremism
- Strategies to handle right-wing extremist manifestations at universities for social work
- (Socio cultural) consequences of the transformation society of East-Germany – approaching the topic within political education activities (in preparation)