Transformations of Political Violence: New Perspectives

First Part of the TraCe lecture series in the summer semester 2025 completed

A room full of people looking at a screen displaying a map. Next to it, a man stands at a podium giving a lecture.

The end of the 2025 summer se­mester also marks the end of the first part of the TraCe lec­ture series “Trans­formations of Poli­tical Vio­lence: New Perspec­tives”. We look back on four well-attended and ex­citing presen­tations. The first three lectures were organized by Astrid Erll, Kaya de Wolff and Hanna Teichler in collaboration with the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform FMSP, while Lisbeth Zimmermann and Lina Schneider arranged the fourth contribution.

The lec­ture series show­cases new approa­ches to the changing forms, insti­tutions, and inter­pretations of poli­tical violence as they are stu­died within TraCe. It brings to­gether perspec­tives from his­tory, socio­logy, poli­tical sciences, and cul­tural studies with ac­tivist voices. 

Michael Roth­berg (UCLA/Wissenschafts­kolleg zu Berlin) kicked things off on May 7 with his lec­ture “Resti­tution, Re­pair and Impli­cation: After­lives of Colonia­lism and the Holo­caust in the Hum­boldt Forum”. He fo­cused prima­rily on the Ger­man lega­cy and conse­quences of colonia­lism and the Holo­caust with re­gard to compen­sation, repa­rations and resto­ration, using the exam­ple of the Hum­boldt Forum in Ber­lin.

A man stands in the centre of the picture in front of a desk and speaks, looking straight ahead. Behind him on the left is a banner with the TraCe logo, next to which an image of people demonstrating is projected onto the wall.

This was followed on June 17 by “The Struggle Con­tinues. Trans­generational Me­mory of the Ova­Herero People’s Geno­cide” by TraCe Visi­ting Fellow Jeph­ta Ngu­herimo. In this lec­ture, he addressed trans­generational me­mory of the geno­cide of the Ova­Herero people and their on­going struggle for jus­tice in Nami­bia. From the perspe­ctive of a Nami­bian acti­vist and descen­dant of geno­cide vic­tims, he shared perso­nal perspec­tives on the me­mory of colo­nial vio­lence and the on­going struggle for resto­rative justice. 

The third lec­ture “Victim­hood Nationa­lism: His­toriy and Me­mory in a Glo­bal Age” was gi­ven on June 24 by Jie-Hyun Lim from So­gang Uni­versity, South Ko­rea. He ex­plored the con­cept of “victim­hood natio­nalism” and illus­trated how memo­ries of victim­hood circu­late in the glo­bal memo­ry space in the post-war pro­cess of co­ming to terms with the past.

The fourth and fi­nal lecture in the se­ries, “Prac­ticing Norm Locali­zation in the Inter­national Human Rights Re­gime”, was pre­sented by Adam Ko­chanski (Uni­versity of Guelph, Ca­nada) on July 9. In his presen­tation, Kochanski ex­plored how inter­national human rights norms are adap­ted to and em­bedded within local con­texts. 

The first three lectures are available to watch on the TraCe YouTube-Channel.

The TraCe Re­search Center is loo­king for­ward to conti­nuing Part 2 of the lec­ture series in the win­ter se­mester 2025/2026 at Goe­the Uni­versity. We warmly in­vite you to visit the up­coming lec­tures by Valerie Sticher (ETH Zü­rich), Nina von Uexkull (Uni­versity of Kon­stanz), Elisabeth Wood (Yale Uni­versity) and Ste­phanie Hof­mann (EUI). More infor­mation about the up­coming presen­tations will follow short­ly on our web­site.