Interventions - Rewriting peace and conflict

Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World

Organised by the competence network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict in cooperation with the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), the conference Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World, took place in Tunis in October 2025. The event marked the culmination of four years of collaborative research by members of the network, while also opening a space for collective reflection on the implications of the network’s contributions to the field. Over the four days in Tunis the discussions demonstrated the deep relationship between knowledge production and global hierarchies, showing that rethinking peace and conflict studies necessarily entails confronting epistemic foundations while remaining attentive to the ongoing geopolitical developments, uneven power relations and political economies that continue to shape the field.

Miriam Bartelmann, Viviana García Pinzón & Fabricio Rodríguez

Policy Paper: „Menschliche Überreste” in Universitätssammlungen

Dieses Policy Paper greift eine dringend notwendige Debatte über postkoloniale Hierarchien in der Forschung auf. Im Zentrum steht die Verantwortung von Universitäten, sich kritisch mit ihrer kolonialen Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen und fortbestehende Gewaltverhältnisse zu erkennen und zu überwinden. Trotz wachsender Sensibilität fehlt es bislang an klaren Richtlinien für universitäre Praxis und Politik, insbesondere im Umgang mit kolonialen Sammlungen und der Rückgabe menschlicher Überreste. Um Forschung von diesen problematischen Grundlagen zu befreien, braucht es eine systematische und methodologische Auseinandersetzung sowie eine enge Zusammenarbeit mit betroffenen Gemeinschaften und politischen Akteuren. Das Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT) der Universität Freiburg beantragte erfolgreich eine Förderung beim Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst (MWK) in Baden-Württemberg, um die Herkunft kolonialer Relikte zu erforschen. Basierend auf diesen Erfahrungen zeigt dieses Policy Paper konkrete Wege auf, wie Universitäten ihre koloniale Vergangenheit aufarbeiten können.

Richard Tsogang Fossi & Andreas Mehler

Can Europe come to terms with its colonial past?

Over the last few years, several European powers and actors have increasingly engaged with political acts of remembering colonial violence, wars, and crimes committed in Africa in their name. Among other examples, Berlin renamed some of its streets which were honouring colonial figures, French President Emmanuel Macron commissioned an official report on the memory of the colonisation and war in Algeria, and some British universities and cultural institutions returned looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. But can this truly lead to ‘coming to terms’ with its colonial past? Can reparations, restitutions, apologies, and other symbolic acts ‘fix’ the damage of decades of European colonialism? Who has a voice or who does not in these debates? These are the questions my students and I discussed in a seminar entitled ‘Can Europe Come to Terms with its Colonial Past in Africa?’ taught in Liberal Arts & Sciences at University College Freiburg in the Winter semester 2024/25. These questions were also at the heart of the zines they produced as a final assignment, which are presented in this intervention, showing how creative practices can be used by students to engage with difficult topics of colonial memory.

Richard Legay, Franziska Bergert, Miriam Haverkamp, Julie Mackensen, Cheyenne Moeser, Emma Nightingale

Against simplification

Written for students, journalists, practitioners and decision-makers, the entry responds to simplifying accounts of postcolonialism and discusses the main points of convergence and divergence between the fields of de-/postcolonial thought and peace and conflict studies. Using the current global political situation and the heated debates about ‘woke gender and postcolonial ideologies’ as a starting point, the first section of this entry outlines the broad field of postcolonial thought, highlighting three lines of argument. First, de-/postcolonial approaches deal with colonial continuities. Second, they form part of a broader movement to critically assess the impact of interests and standpoints on knowledge production, and to use language for the reconstitution of subjectivity, identity, and politics. Third, de-/postcolonial thought and practice are intrinsically linked to resistance in diverse forms. The second part section of this the entry turns to the field of peace and conflict studies and spells out how it connects to these three lines of arguments. The entry is an invitation to delve deeper into the field, and to think ahead.

Anika Oettler

Fanzine: Juana Julia Guzmán

We have been told that the feminist movement in Colombia was born out of the fight for women’s suffrage. We have also been told that feminism in our country evolved based on the “waves” that emerged in the global north. But what would happen if we questioned these stories, imported from other places and other experiences? What if we thought of feminism as the struggles by women in our territory in response to the multiple oppressions against women, small farmers, indigenous people, black people, and workers since the colonial era?
And what if we did this by listening to what social movements and some currents of grassroots feminism in Colombia have been telling us for decades: by recognizing Juana Julia Guzman, an Afro-indigenous woman active in the Caribbean coast region of Colombia in the 1920s, as a pioneer of our feminist struggles. A pioneer who was not a laundress or a domestic worker, yet fought for the rights of laundresses and domestic workers; who was not subject to the matrícula—a kind of debt slavery—yet fought to abolish it; and who was not a farmer, yet fought for small farmers’ right to land.

Diana Milena Patiño Niño

Becoming an Author in Times of Asymmetric Ignorance

As we all know, writing – and by extension, becoming an author – begins with reading. And still, on occasion, scholars sheepishly confess to never having read certain foundational or canonical texts – a show of modesty intended to underscore their competence in other areas. Take, for example, a sociologist who has never read Weber’s Protestant Ethic or a philosopher who has never sat down with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Assuming the person has already achieved a certain status in their discipline, such gaps in education can be spun as a creative virtue. Yet plenty of scholars have never read a single text from whole regions of the non-Western world and rarely feel such shame about it, as no one expects them to be familiar with such works as a standard of competence in their field. This shamelessness signals what postcolonial theorists have described as “sanctioned ignorance” among elite theorists (Spivak, 1999: x), or an asymmetrical ignorance between the European centre of knowledge production and its “Third World” periphery – an asymmetry that, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty, constitutes “the very nature of social science pronouncements”.

Manuela Boatcă

Policy Paper: Mobilisation, Resistance and Popular Memory

In March 2024, we met virtually with social movements and activists from the cities of Santiago de Chile and Santiago de Cali (Colombia) for an exchange of experiences and reflections on the mass protests that took place at different times between 2019 and 2021 in each city. This document compiles the key reflections from said exchange. It aims to convey the insights of an illustrated policy report originally written and published in Spanish. This paper seeks to reach a broader audience at the intersection of urban protests, the politics of memory, and repertoires of resistance by including civil society organisations, international donors, activists, journalists, and artists. This policy paper tells the story of the storymakers—of those whose lived experiences and reflections offer indispensable knowledge for rethinking justice, memory, and political transformation.

Viviana García Pinzón & Fabricio Rodríguez

Documentary: Peñas Coloradas

“Peñas Coloradas: Memories carried by the river” is an emotional journey into the heart of the memories of a displaced community in Caquetá, Colombia. Through collective memory exercises, the documentary relives what it meant to build their village from scratch on the banks of the Caguan River, before their forced displacement by the Army in 2004. Although return is not their goal, these resilient voices demand their recognition as collective victims of the armed conflict and reflect on a future that honors their history and dignity. Beyond the pain, this work is a testimony of struggle for justice and the preservation of their community identity.

Henry Ortega & Lucy Ortega

Sudan

Sudan is facing one of the world’s most devastating yet underreported humanitarian crises. Since the outbreak of war in April 2023, millions have been displaced, infrastructure destroyed, and civilian lives shattered amid a climate of international neglect and inadequate media attention. This silence is not new. Sudan’s complex histories of revolution, resistance, and repression have long been marginalized in global discourse, often overshadowed by reductive narratives or geopolitical disinterest. Despite this, Sudanese scholars, activists, and communities continue to produce powerful analyses and interventions that illuminate the country’s struggles and aspirations. This intervention page centers Sudanese voices, inviting deeper engagement with the brilliant yet too often overlooked intellectual and political labour of Sudanese thinkers, as well as those in solidarity with them.

Bana Group & Dina Wahba

Policy Paper: „Restes humains” dans les collections universitaires

Cette note stratégique aborde un débat aussi urgent que nécessaire : la responsabilité des universités de se confronter activement à leur passé colonial et de dépasser les rapports de violence qui en résultent. Bien qu’une sensibilité grandissante à ce sujet soit à observer, l’absence de directives claires orientant les pratiques et politiques universitaires, essentiellement s’agissant des collections coloniales et du rapatriement de restes humains, demeure. Afin de libérer la recherche de ces bases problématiques, une coopération étroite avec les communautés affectées et les acteurs politiques, de même qu’une réflexion systématique, sont nécessaires. L’Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT) de l‘Université de Freiburg (Fribourg-en-Brisgau) est parvenu à obtenir un financement du Ministère des Sciences, de la Recherche et des Arts (MWK) du Baden-Württemberg pour examiner la provenance de reliques issues de l’époque coloniale. Sur la base de cette expérience, ce document d’orientation politique met en lumière des pistes concrètes permettant aux universités de travailler en profondeur leur passé colonial.

Richard Tsogang Fossi & Andreas Mehler

Illustrated Report: Movilización, Resistencias y Memoria Popular

En marzo de 2024, movimientos sociales y activistas de las ciudades de Santiago de Chile y Santiago de Cali (Colombia) e investigadores del Arnold Bergstraesser Institut (ABI) de Friburgo se reunieron virtualmente para un intercambio de saberes y experiencias tomando como referencia las protestas masivas que tuvieron lugar en cada ciudad. Esta iniciativa tuvo como premisa central el reconocimiento que las comunidades y los movimientos sociales son parte activa de las dinámicas de producción de espacio y gobernanza de la ciudad, así como productores y portadores de diferentes formas de conocimiento. La reunión de movimientos sociales e iniciativas populares de Colombia y Chile estuvo motivada por el objetivo de crear conexiones reflexivas como lazos personales y colectivos entre los actores y experiencias de cada ciudad. Este documento recopila algunas de las principales reflexiones del intercambio.

Viviana García Pinzón & Fabricio Rodríguez

Policy Paper: Energy, Imperialism and Global Hierarchies in Dispute

This text links two events – the United States’ military intervention in Venezuela and their explicit threats regarding Greenland – as expressions of a single historical pattern: normative selectivity and international impunity, which enable a world power such as the United States to project their imperial military force in order to effect political change in other sovereign states when strategic risks are at stake, particularly in relation to energy resources and critical minerals.

From a Latin American perspective, these dynamics are hardly new. The vocabulary of imperialism, dependency and coloniality has constituted, for decades, an analytical and political repertoire through which to name processes frequently softened in institutional language as measures of stabilisation or security, undertaken in the name of “democracy.”

My argument is that the so-called liberal, rules-based order is not collapsing as a result of a recent deviation, but is instead revealing – once again and with renewed starkness – its long-standing foundations: the entanglement of imperial and colonial violence, economic expansionism and the control of energy sources that have sustained and reconfigured global hierarchies of power over several centuries.

Fabricio Rodríguez

Policy Paper: Recruiting Refugees to Deport Other Refugees

This policy paper collects and analyzes refugee testimonies as a way of engaging pressing political debates on contemporary EU border governance. Rather than offering a conventional catalogue of policy recommendations for decision-makers, it seeks to contribute empirically grounded reflections on how coercion, border violence, and displacement have become increasingly embedded within European migration management practices. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted across the Aegean context, the paper examines how refugees themselves are incorporated into coercive enforcement structures through the practices described here as the “Shadow Army.” In doing so, it engages broader debates on border externalization, securitization, refugee agency, peacebuilding, and the erosion of legal accountability within the EU’s border regime. The document aims to contribute to policy discussions and informed public debate at a moment marked by intensifying geopolitical instability, growing displacement, and mounting pressures on international protection systems. It is directed toward policymakers, researchers, civil society actors, journalists, and readers interested in understanding how contemporary border governance is reshaping not only migration policy, but also the normative foundations and contradictions of EU foreign policy making as a whole.

Mahitab Ali

Policy Paper: Energía, Imperialismo y Jerarquías Globales en Disputa.

Este texto surge del cruce entre investigación académica, reflexión personal y una preocupación política de actual relevancia. No se trata de compartir respuestas cerradas, pronósticos, ni diagnósticos tecnocráticos, sino la convicción de que comprender el presente tiene que partir de una mejor comprensión de la historia. El texto se nutre de mi trayectoria de investigación en economía política global, cuestiones de energía y colonialidad, pero también de una experiencia biográfica concreta: la de un politólogo latinoamericano que observa desde Europa cómo dinámicas históricamente externalizadas, regresan al centro gestor del orden internacional dominante. El documento dialoga con debates sobre energía, imperialismo, y geopolítica crítica. Su objetivo es contribuir a discusiones de política pública y reflexión informada desde el análisis académico, en un momento marcado por la erosión del derecho internacional, el uso creciente de la fuerza militar y la reconfiguración del poder global. El documento está dirigido a responsables de políticas públicas, analistas, académicas y académicos, actores de la sociedad civil y lectores interesados en comprender cómo la violenta historia que sustenta el orden internacional sigue modelando el presente.

Fabricio Rodríguez