News
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 […]
Impressions from the Long Night of the Sciences 2025 Read More »
As the second phase of De:link//Re:link will focus more on the implications of the BRI in Southeast Asian countries, members of our network took part in the HU’s Indonesian Studies Day on 9 May 2025. Prof. Dr. Claudia Derichs, whose research focuses on Indonesia, chaired a roundtable on the subject of China, Indonesia and the
Performance, Politics and Shadow Puppets: Indonesian Studies Day 2025 Read More »
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 we have produced since 2021. The programme consisted of panels concieved by the partners in
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 of De:link//Re:link’s
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.
At the invitation of Gropius Bau and SAVVY Contemporary under the auspices of Berliner Festspiele, various artists, authors, musicians, filmmakers and thinkers participated in the international exhibition titled ‘Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora’ that ran from 6th April until 13th August 2023. I was privileged to have been invited to showcase a section of my De:Link // Re:Link BRI research at Humboldt University of Berlin
Transregional Dynamics of Cosmopolitan Memory Spaces Across Maritime Silk Roads Read More »
Berlin has witnessed myriads of events that shaped global politics. One such event is the 1884-1885 Berlin Congo Conference which subdivided Africa amongst colonialists. China often strategically invokes Western colonialism to remind its Global South counterparts that while the West acted colonially -including colonising China- China is interested in cooperation, friendship, trade and development such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Transnational Anticolonial Afro-Asian Memory Spaces in Berlin Read More »
We were privileged to host our four international fellows this past Summer Semester and partly Winter Semester. During their stint in Berlin, we held a Silk Roads Roundtable session where we discussed various research approaches to study the Belt and Road Initiative and updated each other on our various research projects.
Silk Roads Roundtable with De:Link//Re:Link Fellows Read More »
Two Confucius Institutes exist in Tanzania. Their construction was financed by China and they are hosted by the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Dodoma. The Tanzanian Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Prof. Dr. Aldin Mutembei is a Fellow of our De:Link // Re:Link research project. Prof. Mutembei gave a very insightful public lecture at the Institute for Asian and African Studies here at the Humboldt University zu Berlin.
On June 15, 2023 Jamila Adeli and Linda Ammann gave a presentation at the University of Vienna. Under the title “The power of transcultural politics along China’s Belt and Road Initiative: The promise of culture in Sino-African relations” we introduced a decidedly (trans)cultural perspective on the BRI and its reciprocal relations in so-called new silk
Talk: The Power of Transcultural Politics Along China’s BRI Read More »
