Research Platforms

Democratic achievements in Africa are at risk. Military coups and ongoing resource-plundering by external parties have raised fears of further backsliding to authoritarian rule. Dr. Joseph Asunka, CEO of the survey research network Afrobarometer, will describe how Africans perceive the current state of affairs. 

Video now online!

The MIASA Publication Workshop aims to foster research by African scholars to facilitate their publication in renowned African Studies journals. In doing so, it seeks to address asymmetries in knowledge production, which is the overarching goal of the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA).

This comic addresses rural transformations in Africa. Between February and May 2020, researchers from different countries worked together virtually and at the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa. This comic gives you an insight into our research.

GIGA Senior Research Fellow Dr. Julia Grauvogel was part of a delegation that travelled to Ghana from 2 to 8 October 2024. The trip was organised by Hamburg’s Ministry for Science, Research, Equality and Municipalities under the leadership of Katharina Fegebank, the ministry’s head and Second Mayor of Hamburg. The delegation’s intensive talks opened promising avenues of future research cooperation. 

Democratic achievements in Africa are at risk. Military coups and ongoing resource-plundering by external parties have raised fears of further backsliding to authoritarian rule. Dr. Joseph Asunka, CEO of the survey research network Afrobarometer, will describe how Africans perceive the current state of affairs. 

Video now online!

The MIASA Publication Workshop aims to foster research by African scholars to facilitate their publication in renowned African Studies journals. In doing so, it seeks to address asymmetries in knowledge production, which is the overarching goal of the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA).

This comic addresses rural transformations in Africa. Between February and May 2020, researchers from different countries worked together virtually and at the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa. This comic gives you an insight into our research.

The East Asia Institute (EAI), Seoul, and the GIGA co-hosted a seminar titled “Engaging in the Indo-Pacific: German and South Korean Views” on 6 July 2022 at the East Asia Institute conference hall. The panelists held an in-depth discussion on the vision for the Indo-Pacific region, measures for German-South Korean cooperation, and both countries’ strategies for engagement.

This volume, co-edited by Patrick Köllner, was published in late 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book brings together a unique team of academics and practitioners to analyse interests, institutions, and issues affecting and affected by the transition from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific.

This conference discusses the current geopolitical transformations taking place in the Indo-Pacific. The objective is to debate the stakes of these evolutions, their implications for our understanding of international politics in Asia, and their policy implications for European states and the European Union.

The Franco-German Observatory invites key actors from the Indo-Pacific to present their vision of the region, how they conceive of it geo-strategically and the place of China, the US, and Europe within this framework. We will debate questions of economic interdependence and independence, of trade and investment, and the expectations the countries of the Indo-Pacific might have towards the “West”.

The East Asia Institute (EAI), Seoul, and the GIGA co-hosted a seminar titled “Engaging in the Indo-Pacific: German and South Korean Views” on 6 July 2022 at the East Asia Institute conference hall. The panelists held an in-depth discussion on the vision for the Indo-Pacific region, measures for German-South Korean cooperation, and both countries’ strategies for engagement.

This volume, co-edited by Patrick Köllner, was published in late 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book brings together a unique team of academics and practitioners to analyse interests, institutions, and issues affecting and affected by the transition from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific.

This conference discusses the current geopolitical transformations taking place in the Indo-Pacific. The objective is to debate the stakes of these evolutions, their implications for our understanding of international politics in Asia, and their policy implications for European states and the European Union.

The GIGA is taking part in the establishment of a Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in the capital of Tunisia. This research centre will be dedicated to the study of processes of social change that have come about as a result of the Arab protest movements of 2011.

To inaugurate the "Rencontres Ibn Khaldûn", MECAM is holding an event in which actors directly concerned by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic world will take part. They will be invited to discuss the problems of distance learning, mobility and the challenges of research in times of health crisis.

Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) to be established at the Université de Tunis

Economic theory defines the difference between the private and the public sector in terms of the legal ownership of capital. In other words, the public sector’s means of production are owned by the community through the state while those of the private sector are in the hands of entrepreneurs, who are members of civil society. This distinction between the categories of “public” and “private,” inspired by Western experience, appears insufficient to account for the reality of most countries whose state-building processes have followed paths different from those experienced in the Western world.

Shortages in Tunisia have not resulted in the overt politics of bread riots. Nevertheless, citizens made ethical claims regarding the just distribution of goods. While this does not preclude overt political unrest in the future, it suggests that the bread riot thesis, with its prioritising of claim-making against the state, has overlooked the market as an arena of social intervention.

Based on its guiding theme “Imagining Futures – Dealing with Disparity,” MECAM, the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb in Tunis, aims to play a notable role in advancing both current and future knowledge production in the Humanities and Social Sciences within, from, and about the Maghreb.

Social actors’ representative organisations and their effective participation in decision-making should be fostered through more collaborative governance institutions. Building mutual trust between different CSOs would also help here. This would prevent favouritism and provide more beneficial input to the state, both serving to promote more inclusive and sustainable growth for Tunisia.

Under the overall theme “Imagining Futures: Dealing with Disparity”, the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) invites applications for nine fellowships for postdoctoral and advanced researchers in the humanities and social sciences for the period from September 2024 to April 2025.

There are some striking similarities between quietist Salafi thinking in Morocco and key political and societal dictates of liberal and neoliberal logics. These traditions all variously vilify the state as a means of effecting individual and, ultimately, societal transformation. They also variously locate matters of responsibility at the level of each individual, rather than at the level of society or the state.

Mobile phones have a close relation to the hand itself, when they are used as handheld cameras, or in the way a touchscreen is operated. When mobile phone cameras are used in documentary filmmaking to tell a migrant’s story on their own terms, they offer a “hands-on” approach to digital knowledge production that incorporates not only the reality of its production but also the potential for a change of perspective.

Conflicts, authoritarian resurgence, mass forced displacement, and economic crisis are impacting countries across the Middle East and North Africa. These have led many to depict this as the onset of an Arab winter. This talk by Maha Yahya will unpack some of the political and socioeconomic challenges.

The official politics of forgetting involved in Algeria’s post–Civil War reconciliation process poses important moral and political questions about the constitution of the political subject and of citizenship. This MECAM Paper deals with reconciliation in Algeria.

Contemporary (predominantly post-2011) Arabic fiction exhibits a dystopian strand that projects a pessimistic view of the future. This literature has become particularly prominent not least because environmental degradation is a major problem in the Arab region.

The GIGA is taking part in the establishment of a Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in the capital of Tunisia. This research centre will be dedicated to the study of processes of social change that have come about as a result of the Arab protest movements of 2011.

To inaugurate the "Rencontres Ibn Khaldûn", MECAM is holding an event in which actors directly concerned by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic world will take part. They will be invited to discuss the problems of distance learning, mobility and the challenges of research in times of health crisis.

Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) to be established at the Université de Tunis