Interventions

Michael Rothberg's ANTON WILHELM AMO LECTURE of 18 June 2025 at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has been published as No. 12 in the series by Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg. The text examines Pınar Öğrenci's essay film Aşît [The Avalanche] through the concept of relational remembrance.

Jonny Grünsch conducts research together with the association Pödelwitz hat Zukunft on climate justice during and after the coal phase-out. For the new edition of the Coal Atlas Saxony (forthcoming), published by the Saxony state association of BUND, he co-authored an article with Nora Mittelstädt on the current developments in Pödelwitz.

Bridging university research and public participation

On Reformation Day (31 October) 2025, the annual disputation of Martin Luther University (MLU) Halle-Wittenberg took place in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Following the festive procession of the Academic Senate, Meron Mendel, Ottfried Fraisse and Olaf Zenker discussed the role of the university as a forum for discourse in politically polarised times. The focus was on controversies surrounding anti-Semitism, racism and the limits of academic freedom.

This reader offers, for the first time, an overview of the diverse practices, formats, and approaches through which the project of “Public Anthropology” is currently being implemented at institutes of ethnological disciplines in Germany. In five sections—Publics, Collaborations, Positionings, Transformations, and Mediation—authors discuss practice-oriented examples of public anthropological work. They highlight both the scholarly and societal gains of Public Anthropology as well as the challenges associated with it.

Especially in times of crisis, the feeling of belonging is important. But what if the crisis actually happened decades ago, yet the feeling is still so close?