Berlin Istanbul Lecture Series
Urban Space and Refugees
As a form of human mobility, migration across borders, regular or irregular, voluntary or forced, as well as temporary or permanent. These categories do not have clear-cut boundaries, since migrants challenge and re-create the socio-economic, cultural and political conditions of any urban space they dwell within. Berlin and Istanbul have remarkable examples of these transformations in relation to their experiences of migration and intermixing. These two metropolises, with a degree of similarity, have been the centers of migration flows that derived from wars, international conflicts and regional unrest throughout their histories. Recently, the migrants, who have made the move from Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and even from Europe due to various discontents since the last decade,
Within a broader framework, Germany (among the member states of the European Union) and Turkey (among the Southeastern Europe and Middle Eastern countries) have become the leading countries in terms of the recipients of asylum applications over the last four years (UNCHR 2014) , While Turkey has the largest number of Syrian refugees (close to 2.2 million people) that could benefit from the Government's Temporary Protection Regime, Germany has the highest number of new applications (approximately 160,000) in 2015 (UNCHR 2015). In addition, after arriving to Turkey, some of the migrants have made a new transnational migration route between Turkey and Germany.
Therefore, the Berlin-Istanbul Lecture Series aims to explore the impact of the so-called refugee crisis on Berlin and Istanbul in a comparative perspective, keeping in mind the complex set of links between these two metropolises. In the fields of education, business, engineering, technology, architecture, urban planning and culture. The topics that are included in the lecture series include: housing, education, gender, health, food, political participation, solidarity, civil society, informality, mobility and temporality.
To investigate these topics, we would like to invite graduate students and postdoctoral scholars of anthropology, architecture, cultural studies, geography, history, international relations, law, philosophy, political sciences, sociology and urban studies. The lecture series will take place on the 27 th and 28 th of October in Istanbul and 25 th and 26 th of November in Berlin, 2016, The lecture series in each city is organized as a two-day workshop by the Berlin International University of Applied Science and Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University of Berlin. Funds wants to be available for the accommodation and travel costs of participating graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in both cities.
Conference Program Istanbul download here
Conference Program Berlin download here
Application materials:
CV and abstract (max 250 words). Please email your application documents to:
berlin-istanbul@lecture-series.com
Application Deadline:
September 23, 2016