Workshops, Conferences & Guest Lectures

30 April 2025 | TNH Roundtable ‘The Crisis of the Humanities, Responses and Interventions: The Academy in Exile, a Case Study’

Date: Wednesday, 30 April 2025
Time: 4pm
Venue: Humanities Institute (H204 / top floor)

The UCD Humanities Institute will host a roundtable discussion on the Crisis of the Humanities with Professors Kader Konuk and Vanessa Agnew (Technical University Dortmund), the Director and Associate Director of the (opens in a new window)Academy in Exile

• Attendance is free but registration is required | Please register on (opens in a new window)Eventbrite HERE

The Trump administration’s campaign against universities, as exemplified by the threat to cancel major grants to Columbia University which then bowed to government interference, underlines the speed and scope of the assault on universities and on academic freedom. Direct political and legislative assaults have proliferated with more than 30 US states having enacted legislation limiting the teaching and discussion of certain topics, such as critical race theory, gender and sexual orientation. At the same time in the UK university management is responding to serious underfunding of the higher education sector by sacking staff, closing humanities programmes and axing Schools of Modern Languages, English, Ancient History, Theology, and Art History --  amongst others.  Meanwhile academic freedom is being eroded across the EU too, as documented by the European Parliament (EP) Academic Freedom Forum.

In this disruptive context our roundtable broadly examines the crisis of the humanities, and interventions responses, featuring the ‘Academy in Exile’ as a case study. Founded in 2017, the Academy in Exile is a joint initiative to support cultural producers and scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and law who are at risk because of their academic work and/or their civic engagement in human rights, democracy, and pursuit of academic freedom. The Academy in Exile is based on a model that creates multidisciplinary cohorts of scholars around a unified theme, with the aim of enabling persecuted scholars to collaborate with one another.

Professor Kader Konuk, Professor of German literature at the Technical University Dortmund and Director of the Academy in Exile, is a comparatist with expertise in the literary and cultural history of migration and exile. In 2022, she was made honorary professor of the Research School of Humanities & Arts at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on ethnic and religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Turkey, and examines discourses, cultural practices, and disciplinary formations that are shaped by travel, migration, and exile. In 2028, she initiated the ‘Transnational Literary Archive’ at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Turkish Department. A first of its kind in Germany, the Archive collects transnational literature produced in Germany and provides a framework for conducting research into Germany’s multicultural heritage. Her monograph, East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey (Stanford UP 2010) investigates the relationship between German-Jewish exile and the modernization of the humanities in Turkey. It won the annual prizes for the best book in comparative literature and Germany studies, receiving both the René Wellek Prize (from the American Comparative Literature Association) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) award (from the German Studies Association).

Professor Vanessa Agnew is Professor of Anglophone Studies in the Faculty of Cultural Studies at Technical University Dortmund, Associate Director of the Academy in Exile, and Honorary Professor in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts’ Humanities Research Centre at The Australian National University. Her research interests include: Anglo-German cultural history; Intercultural exchange and knowledge transfer; Postcolonial theory; and Music discourses from the 18th century to the present, among others. Her book Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds (Oxford, 2008) won the Oscar Kenshur Prize and the American Musicological Society’s Lewis Lockwood Award. She has co-curated numerous exhibitions including: Right to Arrive (Canberra, 2018); Fixing What’s Broken (Berlin, 2023); and What We Brought with Us (Re:Writing the Future Festival, 2021; German Literature Archive Marbach, 2022; Goethe-Institut New York and University of Cincinnati, 2023; and Dengê min tê te? Hörst du mich? Festival für kurdische Exilliteratur, Literaturhaus Berlin, 2024). Agnew’s children’s book Wir schaffen das – We’ll Make It (Sefa Verlag, 2021) has been translated into Ukrainian, Arabic, and Farsi.

• Download event poster here

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28 May 2025 | ‘The Future of Cultural Memory: A Dialogue in Times of Disruption’ Roundtable

Date: Wednesday, 28 May 2025
Time: 4.30pm
Venue: Humanities Institute (H204 / top floor) 

• PLEASE NOTE: Registration is free but essential | Spaces allocated on first come/first served basis | Please register on Eventbrite (opens in a new window)HERE

The UCD Humanities Institute is delighted to host a roundtable discussion with two world-renowned public intellectuals: Aleida Assmann (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c., Emerita Professor of English Literature, | University of Konstanz) and Susan Neiman (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c., Director, Einstein Forum | Berlin) have made significant public interventions in the ongoing debate on democracy and its institutions, misinformation, anti-Semitism, the war in Gaza, the rise of the far right and the need for a cultural memory that is responsive to global polycrises.

The evidence that we are living in a world of seismic disruption is overwhelming: the unravelling of postwar liberal order and of the transatlantic alliance; the unprecedented decision by the new US government to vote with Russia against a Ukrainian and European backed UN Resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine; Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, Gaza and Canada; the unleashing of trade wars; the global erosion of democracy; the rise of the far right in Germany, Europe and globally; the crisis of trust in democratic institutions; malign disinformation campaigns by hostile actors – these are just some examples of cascading and connected crises that threaten the postwar liberal order. In this tumultuous context championing a critical cultural memory based on diversity, equality and inclusion is ever more important. We will discuss the need for critical cultural memory in response to revisionist agendas, while also exploring new approaches that reflect the diverse make-up of contemporary societies.  

Aleida Assmann is emerita Professor of English Literature at the University of Konstanz.  Her research on cultural memory, its forms and functions has been path-breaking, as manifest in her global recognition. Related areas of her research are: the history of media, the history and theory of reading. In 2014, she received the Heineken Prize for History by the (opens in a new window)Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, she was awarded the (opens in a new window)Balzan Prize for Collective Memory together with her late husband, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann. In 2018, Aleida and Jan were awarded the prestigious (opens in a new window)Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, honouring their work for "sustainable peace". Since 2020, Assmann has been a member of the order (opens in a new window)Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts. In 2021 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Her work has been translated into many languages. Publications in English include: Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories (ed. with Sebastian Conrad, 2010), Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (2012), Shadows of Trauma. Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (2016). Is the Time Out of Joint? On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime (2020).

Susan Neiman is a US American philosopher, cultural commentator, essayist and public intellectual.  She has written extensively on the juncture between moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public. She currently lives in Germany, where she is the Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard, completing her Ph.D. under John Rawls and Stanley Cavell.  She also studied at the Freie Universität Berlin, and was professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University. Her books, translated into many languages, include Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin (1992, new ed. 2010); The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant (1994), Evil in Modern Thought (2002); Fremde sehen anders (2005); Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists (2008); Why Grow Up? (2016); Widerstand der Vernunft. Ein Manifest in postfaktischen Zeiten (2017); Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (2019); and Left is not Woke (2024).  She has also published over one hundred essays in many newspapers, magazines and journals. She is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

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Date: Thursday, 2 October 2025
Time: 2.30-4pm
Venue: Humanities Institute (H204 / top floor)

In a time of noise and multi-tasking activities, it has become particularly difficult to sit down with a book and focus on our reading. This might be a problem, considering that reading is such a fundamental part of our career as graduate students, early-career academics, and academics. For this reason, every two months, on a Thursday from 2.30 to 4 pm, the UCD Humanities Institute offers a safe and quiet space to read together… in silence! The aim is to share our love for reading and for our research without feeling the pressure to talk about it. There is only one rule: bring your book or e-book along (it doesn’t matter which one) and enjoy with your fellow readers!