News
Impressions from the Long Night of the Sciences 2025
Our stand at the 25th anniversary edition of the Long Night of the Sciences included something for all ages. Here’s a taste of what we presented at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on 28 June 2025. A map of the Belt and Road Initiative’s land and sea routes, designed by Iaroslav Boretskii (ZOiS), helped visitors visualise the
New Phase, New Connections: Our Journey along the BRI Continues
Since the De:link//Re:link research consortium formed in April 2021, there have been dramatic political changes in (Eur)Asia. Among them the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan later that year, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The expansion of the BRICS group of nations added to significant shifts in international relations. These
De:link // Re:link final conference
The conference marking the end of our first phase of funding took place at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on 23 and 24 May 2024. Titled ‘Local Roads, Global Belts’, the event covered the wide spectrum of research on the BRI that has been produced since 2021. The programme consisted of panels concieved by the partners in
World Cafe and ZOiS Forum
On 28 November 2023, a World Café followed by a ZOiS Forum took place at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS). At the World Café entitled „New Insights about the Belt and Road from (Eur)Asia to (East)Africa: Strategies, Narratives and Reactions“ (organized by PI Julia Langbein) scholars from all four research consortium
Recent publication: “New Silk Road Narratives”
It is not only goods, financial capital or technologies that are being traded, negotiated and circulated along the China-led Belt and Road Initiative but also values, emotions and cultural practices. The latter are often decisive when imagining and establishing a transregional infrastructure of the scale of the BRI. This book explores connections and disconnections along
INTERNATIONAL SILK ROADS SYMPOSIUM
As China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forges ahead, it continues to receive exponential media, societal and academic attention globally. Greece’s Piraeus harbor, Kenya’s SGR railway and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, amongst others, are often cited in many BRI discussions for diverse reasons. Reactions emanating from these discussions vary, just like the effects of the BRI projects themselves; from very successful outcomes of some; to ambivalent or detrimental effects of others; to comparative debates where BRI projects are compared to other initiatives; to reflections on debt distress amongst participant states. While engaging with notions of “de-linking” and “re-linking” for reflection and exploration of BRI effects and experiences – whereby “link” also stands for drawing from “local insights and new knowledges” – this symposium aims at analyzing current and future BRI perspectives across Asia, Africa and Europe.