Veranstaltungen im HS 2025

We start the semester with our kick-off meeting where we will welcome the new Global Studies phd students to the program and share with you the upcoming GS events. It is a perfect opportunity to meet your PhD fellows and the program head, Prof. Dr. Elize Mazadiego.

The event will also provide a platform to discuss the program and discuss your ideas for future courses and events. The kick-off meeting will be followed by a coffee break. We look forward to seeing you all!

Over the past five decades, global agricultural practices have seen sweeping changes driven by shifts in political and economic strategies, from the Green Revolution in Asia to large-scale land acquisitions in Africa necessitating alongue-duree view of these transformations, their continuities, and changes. These developments, coupled with the forces of globalization and neoliberalism, have intensified corporate control over both land and resources, often exacerbating challenges for smallholder farmers and indigenous communities. The doctoral workshop, 'Of Land and Labour: Agrarian Capitalism in the Modern World,' will explore the historical and present-day transformations that have redefined global agro-regimes, with a focus on the Global South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary workshop is to present the ongoing projects of researchers working on migration and mobility within, from, and to the Middle East.  PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers will either present a paper or give an overview of their projects, depending on their individual needs and the stage of their research. The workshop participants will receive detailed feedback from, Dr. Akram Khater, Professor of History at North Carolina State University and Director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, a specialist in the field of Middle Eastern Migration History. The event offers an opportunity for early-career researchers to discuss their work in an intimate and collegial atmosphere, focusing on the topic of mobilities and migration in the Middle East.

Reading Seminar: 24 October & 5 December, 10AM-12.30 PM, F -103 Unitobler

Public Lecture (mandatory for participants): 4 December, 5.30 PM, F -123 Unitobler

This reading seminar explores the theoretical, methodological, and ethical dimensions of working with “global archives”. Grounded in Martin Dusinberre’s provocation—“What is the global archive, where is it cited, and who are ‘we’ as we cite it?”—the course critically examines the construction, circulation, and authority of archives in transnational, transregional and global contexts.

Public  Lecture with Martin Dusinberre (UZH): The Archive and the Author: from Japan to Australia, via a very fine steamship

4 December, 5.30 PM, F -123 Unitobler

Moderation: Dr. Agnes Gehbald, University of Bern

In The Historian‘s Craft (1949), Marc Bloch urges historians to ask, «How can I know what I am about to say?» The answer to this question brings us to «the archive», as if we can all agree that it is a singular phenomenon, and to the author, whose idiosyncrasies and contingent experiences are—we have long been taught to assume—irrelevant to and distracting from the production of «objective» knowledge. In this lecture, Martin Dusinberre challenges these assumptions through the study of two non-European sites, and through the study of knowledge produced in the «in-between» space between the two.

The monthly Global Studies coffee break is held on the last Tuesday of each month at Caffè Bar Sattler. This event offers an opportunity to share and exchange ideas, such as planning workshops and suggesting upcoming events, ask questions about the Global Studies program, or simply enjoy a casual conversation with fellow PhD students over a cup of coffee.