about

TEACHING THE CRISIS is an intensive program fostering international scholarly exchange and discussion around the ongoing political, economic, social and ecological crisis – in Europe and beyond. For the first time in September 2013, it convened students and faculty from eleven different countries and diverse disciplinary backgrounds (such as Anthropology, Political Science, Philosophy, Gender Studies, Management, Literature, Sociology and International Relations) over the course of thirteen days at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

The following faculty took part, along with students from participating institutions:

Fethi Açikel (University of Ankara), Athena Athanasiou (Panteion University of Social and Political Science Athens), Manuela Bojadžijev (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Emma Dowling (Middlesex University London), Montserrat Galceran Huguet (Complutense University of Madrid), Andrej Kurnik (University of Ljubljana), Isabell Lorey (University of Basel), Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna), Julian Reid (University of Lapland), and Regina Römhild (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

The program also included faculty participation by Michael Hardt (Duke University), Stefano Harney (Singapore Management University), Jan Hutta (University of Bayreuth) and Ben Trott (Free University Berlin, as of October 2013) along with additional student participation from the University of Tirana.

We believe that in these times of crisis, socially, politically and culturally engaged teaching and research has an important function. For this reason, we organized a teaching and research encounter through which new and exciting processes can emerge. This encounter was a first step towards enabling critical, transnational interrogation into the complexities, causal relationships and consequences of the crisis, with view to emerging spaces for developing potential alternative courses of action.

In this initial encounter, we investigated the nature, manifestations and trajectories of the crisis in the fields and localities that inform our work. Participants, both faculty and students, shared insights and presented their most recent research in formats that included lectures, workshops, seminars, city tours and book presentations.

The two-week encounter was a success in terms of our broader goals of interrogating and developing appropriate methodologies and perspectives on the crisis and to mapping its geographies with a view to culture and everyday life; urban politics and transformations; logistics, labour and precariousness; migration and gender; social movements, cultural production and new subjectivities; the transformation of statehood; financial crisis, commons and democracy.

Full reports produced by student research groups, consisting of students at the MA and PhD levels from participating universities, can now be read on this website. Additional information regarding the continuation of TEACHING THE CRISIS will be posted in due time.