IEE on Tour

External activities of IEE members.

Anja Zorob participated in the workshop and roundtable discussion "Fortress Europe?", which was held from 18 to 19 November at the Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg, Germany.

Raffael Beier attended the International Graduate Conference 'Move on! Mobility meets (little) resistances', which was held in Vienna from 26 to 28 November. At the conference he presented on 'Urban Mobility, Resistance, and the State - The Urbanism of Urgency in North Africa'.

In the context of the oral exams and graduation of MADM students of the Cape Town group, Wilhelm Löwenstein, Gabriele Bäcker, and Tobias Thürer visited the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, from 29 November to 08 December.

From 8 to 9 December Gabriele Bäcker participated in a start-up meeting of the Erasmus+ project "Enhancing Postgraduate Environments", held in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Jasmin Fritzsche was invited to present a paper on "Humanitarian Visa and the International Responsibility to Protect" at the University of Leeds' workshop "The Responsibility to Protect and the Refugee Crisis", held 17 to 19 January.

From January to Feburary 2016 Loubna Abi Khalil attended a short course on "Designing Research with Urban Displaced Populations in MENA Region" at the American University of Cairo, Egypt.

On 3 February Raffael Beier and Anja Zorob presented on "Der Euro-Mediterrane „Dialog" zu Migration, Mobilität und Sicherheit: Von ‚neuen' Diskursen und ‚altbekannten' Instrumenten' (The Euro-Mediterranean ‚Dialogue' on Migration, Mobility and Security: On ‚new' discourses and ‚old' concepts)" at the Geographic Colloquium of the RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.

From 4 to 5 February Elkhan Sadik-Zada together with Dieter Bender attended the conference „Mobilisierung von privatem Kapital für Entwicklungsfinanzierung (Mobilization of private capital for development finance)", which was held in Montabaur, Germany.

As the IEE contact person in the Euro-Mediterranean Forum of Economic Institutes (FEMISE), Anja Zorob took part in the FEMISE Annual Conference, 13-14 February 2016, Athens, Greece.

Jasmin Fritzsche was a speaker at the conference "'Aus den Augen aus dem Sinn'. Externalisierung und Regionalisierung von Migrations-und Flüchtlingspolitik (‚Out of Sight, out of mind'. Externalization and Regionalization of Migration and Refugee Policy)", which was organized by Bread for the World and held from 22 to 24 February in Berlin, as part of a panel discussion on the Khartoum Process she presented on the current situation of refugees in Egypt.

Raffael Beier co-organised the workshop on "Was ist das Städtische an städtischen Bewegungen? (What is the Urban in Urban Social Movements?"), hosted by the working group „Stadt/Raum (city/space)" of the Institut für Protest- und Bewegungsforschung (Institute for Social Movement Studies). At the workshop, which was held from 26 to 27 February in Frankfurt, he presented on "Ein städtischer Frühling? Stadtpolitik im Zeichen der arabischen Proteste (An Urban Spring? Urban Policy in Light of the Arab Uprisings)".

From 3 to 5 March 2016 Gabriele Bäcker participated in a Networkmeeting of the DAAD-funded Centres of African Excellence, which was held in Accra, Ghana.

Laura Hofmann attended the World Conference on Humanitarian Studies 2016, held in Addis Adeba, Ethiopia, from 5-8 March. She submitted a panel themed "Protecting the Unprotected" and presented a paper on "The Protection of Cultural Property: A Case for Solidarity Rights?".

Loubna Abi Khalil acted as a speaker at the Sussex Migration Graduate Conference, held at the University of Sussex from 14 to 15 March. At a conference panel themed "Beyond the crisis: Forced migration and asylum" Loubna held a presentation on "Urban Refugees as Social Cohesion Actors: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon".

From 14 to 16 March 2016 Gabriele Bäcker participated in a programme design workshop of the Erasmus+ project "Enhancing Postgraduate Environments", which was held in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Martina Shakya, Lesley Hope, and Marc Hansen attended the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in San Francisco from 29 March to 2 April. Martina chaired the session "Urban agriculture: interdisciplinary perspectives on food security and sovereignty". Together with Urban Food Plus colleague Imogen Bellwood-Howard (Göttingen University), Martina also co-presented a paper on "Context specificity in West African urban and peri-urban agriculture: a rationale for interdisciplinary investigation". Lesley and Marc presented their PhD research in the session "Urban agriculture: interdisciplinary perspectives on welfare and resilience". The title of Lesley's presentation was "Assessing the welfare impact of biochar incorporation on urban farmers in Tamale and Ouagadougou". Marc presented a paper on "The welfare impact of agricultural productivity enhancements—an economic evaluation of biochar as a soil amendment for urban vegetable markets in West Africa".

Loubna Abi Khalil was a speaker at the Conference entitled "Migration Crisis? What Crisis? Why Crisis? Thinking, Framing and Theorizing Mass Mobility in a Globalized Age", held at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, from 31 March to 1 April. At a conference panel themed "Crisis Discourse" Loubna presented on "Questioning Discourses on Conflict Diffusion through Refugee Movement: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon".

Jasmin Fritzsche attended the Annual Conference of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, held at Lancaster University, United Kingdom, from 5 to 7 April. At the conference she presented a paper on 'Uniquely protected or uniquely protracted? The recent displacement of Palestinian refugees from Syria'.

From 15-16 April Laura Hofmann and Jasmin Fritzsche attended the conference "The Past in the Present of the Middle East" at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London, hosted by Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and the London Middle East Institute.

Next to lecturing in the context of the PhD IDS and MADM at the IEE, Martina Shakya, together with Astrid Seckelmann from the Faculty of Geography, gives a course on "Geographies of Flight and Migration (Geographien der Flucht)" during the summer semester 2016. The course is open to students of various disciplines as an optional course.

From 29 April to 11 May Tobias Thürer visited the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa to inaugurate the new MADM intake in Cape Town and to give the "Economic Tutorial" as part of the MADM curriculum.

Wilhelm Löwenstein gave the lecture on "Theories of Development: Economic Perspectives" as part of the MADM curriculum from 7 to 21 May at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa.

From 9 to 10 May Johannes Norpoth participated at a Workshop on "Trade and Environment – Positive Integration in the EU and the WTO", held at the Law Faculty at the Ruhr-University Bochum and was the discussant for the paper "Transnational Food Standards as Positive Integration? The Relevance of Private Food Standards to this Question" by Dr. Alexia Herwig from the University of Antwerp.