On December 12, 2025, the Marburg TraCe Team organized a research colloquium and General Assembly, which took place digitally. After welcoming remarks by Thorsten Bonacker, Núrel Bahì Reitz opened the colloquium with her presentation, “Engaging with German Colonial Violence in Namibia and Tanzania.” She discussed how colonial crimes commited by Germans during the Maji Maji Rebellion in Tanzania (1905–1907) are remembered and focused particularly on state-organized remembrance events. She described a remembrance festival she visited during her field research that combined mourning and celebration. She also highlighted the resulting tensions between the local and state organizations, as well as the process of commercializing the commemoration and the demand for respectful remembrance of deceased ancestors. The subsequent discussion linked these observations to the political violence that followed the Tanzanian elections in October 2025, to the global dynamics of “dark tourism,” and to the case study in Namibia. In the second part of the colloquium, which was moderated by Kristine Andra Avram, Mariel Reiss presented her research, titled “Transforming Violence, Transforming Spaces: LGBTIQ+ Activism in Eastern and Southern Africa.” Using examples from Kenya and Namibia, Reiss demonstrated that LGBTIQ+ activism is under increasing threat from restrictions, political violence, and anti-LGBTIQ+ norms. Reiss paid particular attention to the interplay between local actors and global influences, including evangelical groups with neo-colonial rhetoric. The discussion centered on the differences within activism, the strategic framing of opposing norms as “family friendly,” and the significant influence of the United States.
The colloquium was followed by the final General Assembly of the current funding phase. Annika Elena Poppe moderated the digital exchange between the researchers. After a brief report from the TraCe coordination team, in which Annika Elena Poppe also reported that the BMFTR approved financial support for two more years, the participants broke out into groups according to their respective research fields to identify key publications from the first funding phase. Simultaneously, they looked ahead to the next funding phase and identified connections between their research topics and the new cross-cutting themes of violence against activists, the hybridization of war, as well as justice and justification.