by Catalina Ballesteros Garzón and Rebecca Moltmann
As a way to circumvent the constraints of the pandemic, the ZiF research group “Global Contestations of Women’s and Gender Rights” created the podcast series “Whose Rights, Which Rights?”. The series was meant to convey the group’s main topics while continuously underlining the relevance of its international and interdisciplinary approach.
After two years of intense work, the research group “Global Contestations of Women’s and Gender Rights”, led by PD Dr. Alexandra Scheele, Prof. Dr. Julia Roth, and Prof. Dr. Heidemarie Winkel (all Bielefeld University) came to an end. It was challenging; the pandemic started just as some researchers began their on-site residency, and the ZiF became a haven for them, a kind of unexpected monastery for a research withdrawal. Others were unable to travel which was unfortunate because the group was notably diverse. The fellows were from Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the United States, Morocco, Hungary, Austria, Great Britain, among other countries, and came from areas such as Philosophy, Legal Studies, History, Religious Studies, Theology, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Sciences, Gender Studies, Linguistics, and Literary and Cultural Studies.
Grafik: Stefan Adamick
According to Julia Roth, it is key to understand that gender is central to discussing a variety of matters relevant to society. There are many interrelated conjunctures: migration, wealth distribution, labor force and, of course, violence – particularly femicide. Given that such interrelations occur on a global scale, the variety of backgrounds of the fellows, rather than being a challenge, was completely logical and adequate. The communication and exchange within the group flowed effortlessly, says Alexandra Scheele: an “international approach was beyond our desire, it just makes sense to work in that way. The global alliances exist, in the right-wing activism for example, and it was crucial to see the connections”.
Der von Russland völkerrechtswidrig begonnene Angriffskrieg auf die Ukraine beschäftigt zurzeit die gesamte Welt – wie auch die Frage, was man in so einer Situation aus der Entfernung tun kann. Spenden, Hilfs- und Beherbergungsangebote für Geflüchtete und die Weiterverbreitung von fundierten Informationen sind dabei wichtige Optionen.1 Die Lage aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu analysieren und einzuordnen, einen Raum für Reflexion und Austausch zu schaffen, ist die Kompetenz und das Angebot der Wissenschaft. Um einen Beitrag zur Orientierung in der aktuellen Nachrichtenflut zu leisten, haben die Universität Bielefeld und das Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF) am 7. März 2022 gemeinsam eine Podiumsdiskussion im ZiF veranstaltet.
Als deren Grundlage diente Putins Rede an die Nation vom 21. Februar 2022 und das darin vermittelte Bild seiner Geo- und Geschichtspolitik. Drei Aspekte sollten im Zentrum der Diskussion stehen: Wie kann Putins Position eingeordnet werden? Welche Konsequenzen hat die aktuelle Situation für die Zukunft? Und welche Implikationen für die Weltpolitik zeichnen sich ab? Diese Fragen wurden diskutiert von:
v. l.: Andreas Zick, Frank Grüner, Angelika Epple, Gabriele Woidelko, Andreas Vasilache; im Hintergrund auf der Leinwand: Gwendolyn Sasse (Foto: Universität Bielefeld/R. Moltmann)
Frank Grüner (Professor für Osteuropäische Geschichte, Bielefeld),
Gwendolyn Sasse (Wissenschaftliche Direktorin des Zentrums für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien und Einstein-Professorin für Vergleichende Demokratie- und Autoritarismusforschung, Berlin),
Andreas Vasilache (Professor für sozialwissenschaftliche Europaforschung, Bielefeld),
Gabriele Woidelko (Leiterin des Bereichs Geschichte und Politik der Körber-Stiftung, Hamburg) und
Andreas Zick (Leiter des Instituts für interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung und Professor für Sozialisation und Konfliktforschung, Bielefeld).
Moderiert wurde das Podium von Angelika Epple (Prorektorin für Forschung und Internationales und Professorin für Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts).
Nichts Neues, aber zugespitzt und radikalisiert
Das Geschichtsbild, das sich aus Putins Rede vom 21.2.2022 ableiten lasse, sei im Grunde weder neu noch überraschend, darin waren sich die Diskutant*innen einig. Neu sei aber die Dimension der Zuspitzung und die Radikalisierung einzelner Aspekte dieses Bildes. Der Ton sei von Wut und Aggression geprägt und der Ukraine werde jegliche nationale Eigenständigkeit abgesprochen, so Gabriele Woidelko. Grenzen und das Völkerrecht innerhalb Europas würden in der Rede kompromisslos infrage gestellt.
An interview with the ZiF fellows Ulf Büntgen (environmental scientist) and Clive Oppenheimer (volcanologist and filmmaker)
The images of volcanic eruptions, such as the most recent one in Tonga, a Polynesian country and archipelago, are always impressive, their effects above all terrifying. Tonga is a scene of devastation, the drinking water is running low, and fish cultures are destroyed. But little can be said so far about how volcanic eruptions, environmental changes, global climate, and social change are linked. The new international ZiF cooperation group “Volcanoes, Climate and History” aims to remedy this.
Until October 2023, seven researchers from four countries will analyze important historical volcanic eruptions. The goal is to find out how volcanic eruptions affected the global climate system and how environmental changes triggered by them influenced agriculture, conflict, or political structures. In an interview with Ulf Büntgen, head of the group and professor of environmental systems analysis at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Geography, and Clive Oppenheimer, professor at the same department and a film director and producer, we discussed interdisciplinary collaboration and the medium of film as part of the scientific journey of discovery.
One part of the cooperation group “Volcanoes, Climate and History” is the production of a film. It is rather unusal in science to make films–not about science in general, but about the research process itself. What is your goal, what is the film supposed to achieve or to convey?
“it is difficult for an audience to watch a film that has endless talking heads–and that is kind of what we are!”
Clive Oppenheimer
OPPENHEIMER: I think it is an opportunity to do something more experimental. We have this very interdisciplinary nexus, historians, archeologists, climate modelers, volcanologists and so on, coming together and generating a discussion and dialogue at this interface between volcanoes and history. As a film project it is somewhat experimental because it is difficult for an audience to watch a film that has endless talking heads–and that is kind of what we are! We are in an academic mode when we are meeting at these workshops. So one of the things I wanted to tease out are some more general themes. For example: What does it actually mean to do interdisciplinary work? Is it just getting experts in field A and field B to come and sit in a room and talk to each other? Or does it take a historian to come and work in an ice-cold laboratory or a tree ring laboratory for a few months to really transplant themselves into the world of a different discipline?
“I hope it will be a kind of document of how interdisciplinary thinking worked in the early twenty-twenties”
Clive Oppenheimer
I hope it will be a kind of document of how interdisciplinary thinking worked in the early twenty-twenties, as a little moment in the history of science that people will look back on and say ‘that is how people got together and discussed these issues and thought about them’. It is supposed to be compelling because it’s about history and climate and eruption.
BÜNTGEN: The film is not a side project of the cooperation group, that is very important to me. The motivation for me was really to break out of the traditional products. Everyone would say, look, we write a paper and at the end of the cooperation we write a book and use the last workshop to maybe apply for the next funding opportunity etc. That is the usual approach in academia and we will also do that, of course, but I wanted something else and more innovative. And as the film project is highly experimental, as Clive said, we honestly do not really know what the outcome will be, how the filming during the workshop will play out, if we get to film ‘in the field’ at Laacher See, for example and so on. There will be a film and it is going to be nice, I am certain of that.
