Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

01/10/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Birgitte Holst on her new book "Authoritarianism, Displacement and Syrian Family Life
Reckoning with the State", Berghahn Books, Oxford, New York, 2026.

Syrians living in refuge in Lebanon and Turkey during the war in Syria continued to reckon with the Syrian State as a direct and indirect force in their lives. Through an ethnographic account of everyday life in Syrian families with a variety of political standpoints, this book demonstrates how the experience of displacement was shaped by ongoing deliberations on the ways in which the Syrian State had and continued to intersect people’s lives. It provides new perspectives on the co-constitution of authoritarian rule and displacement in a Middle East context.

Birgitte Stampe Holst is Associated Researcher at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. Her research interests focus on investigating processes of political and social change from the point of view of everyday life. Having lived and worked in Syria before the uprising in 2011, she examines these questions predominantly regarding Syrians living in refuge in Syria's neighbour countries. Her work has been published in journals such as Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, Conflict and Society, and Journal of Refugee Studies.

29/09/2026

Studio Matbuğat is live! 💻

Explore the new digital platform accompanying the Audio Matbuğat podcast. What shaped the public discourse of the Volga-Ural Tatars in the early 20th century? How did Old Tatar sound, and how do language, history, and memory intersect?

The new platform conceived by Diliara Brileva transforms the historical periodical page into a multi-sensory experience. Each podcast episode now extends into a rich constellation of materials: original printed pages, careful transcriptions, vocabulary notes, audio readings, and related visuals.
www.studiomatbugat.com

Curated by Diliara Brileva | Artwork by Niiaz Khaziakhmetov

Old Tatar print in text, sound & image

28/09/2026

This is one of 15 fully-funded PhD positions in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network “A Sociology of Post-Imperial Islamic Legal Cultures: Insights from Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia” (MINARET-DN), an EU-funded consortium made up of 11 leading universities and research centres across Europe.

As a partner institution, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V.) is now advertising the position of a research fellow (m/f/div), to start on 1 September 2027. A 36-month full-time EU MSCA employment contract will be offered. Remuneration is paid in accordance with MSCA regulations.

The research fellow is expected to complete a doctoral dissertation in Modern History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, or Central Asian Studies. To this end, they will enrol as a PhD candidate at a Berlin university. A 36-month full-time EU MSCA employment contract will be offered. Remuneration is paid in accordance with MSCA regulations. Additional funds for research and conference travel, visa fees (if required), and publications are available. The position is based in Berlin, yet there will be regular travel as part of the doctoral network.

For the full call: www.zmo.de/en/about-us/career/job-offers

24/09/2026

Iran is once again dominating international headlines. Some of the proposed strategies for weakening its rulers, however, seem to have been drawn from a map rather than from an understanding of the country.
An analysis by Arash Beidollahkhani

Israel's campaign to fracture Iran could give its deeply unpopular rulers a powerful appeal to national survival.

16/09/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Ergün Özgür Liy on her new book “Highly Qualified Immigrants and Refugees Agency, Challenges and Opportunities across Europe – Türkiye” (transcript Verlag, 2026).

How do highly qualified immigrants and refugees navigate integration into the labor market, citizenship, and broader participation in society? Based on examples of scholars, artists, doctors, journalists and many other qualified professionals from Syria, Georgia and Caucasus in Europe and Türkiye, the contributors analyze career paths, professional transitions, and available opportunities, as well as administrative, legal, and social barriers. The volume further considers the influence of diaspora and migrant communities, transnational solidarity, and political networks on their experiences. The focus is on the agency of immigrants and refugees, highlighting their socio-economic, political contributions to host countries.

Ergün Özgür Liy is a Gerda Henkel Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and a guest researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in organisational behaviour and obtained academic degrees in global politics and international relations, banking, and public administration. She is a signatory to the ‘Peace Petition’ of Academics for Peace and has spent the past decade researching immigrants and refugees. Her research focuses on critical scholarship, culture and values, highly qualified individuals, diasporas, forced displacement, immigrants and refugees, and the Adyghe, Abkhaz-Abaza, Ubykh and North Caucasian peoples. She focuses on the Black Sea, Caucasus, European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions.

03/09/2026

🔔 NEW BOOK 📚
"Geschichte Saudi-Arabiens - Vom Wüstenemirat zur Großmacht am Golf" von Ulrike Freitag, erschienen bei C.H. Beck Wissen.

Mekka und Medina begründen Saudi-Arabiens religiösen Einfluss, Öl und Gas seine wirtschaftliche Macht, aber auch politisch und kulturell wird das Land zunehmend zum Global Player. Ulrike Freitag schildert die Geschichte des Wüstenstaats von der Gründung eines saudischen Emirats über die Integration unterschiedlicher Herrschaftsgebiete im 20. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Der Schwerpunkt ihrer souveränen, anschaulichen Darstellung liegt auf dem atemberaubenden Wandel im 21. Jahrhundert, der durch spektakuläre Giga-Projekte wie «The Line» – einer klimaneutralen, 170 Kilometer langen Stadt – international Aufsehen erregt.

https://www.beck-shop.de/freitag-geschichte-saudi-arabiens/product/40728003

03/09/2026

Das ZMO beteiligt sich auch in diesem Jahr am Leibniz Format "Book a Scientist" - ein Speeddate mit der Wissenschaft 🔬

Bei „Book a Scientist“ am 29. September 2026 könnt ihr 25 Minuten lang eine Wissenschaftlerin oder einen Wissenschaftler der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft alles fragen, was euch interessiert.

Vom ZMO dabei sind:

👉🏽 Stefan Kirmse: "Der sowjetische Atomkult. Wissenschaft und Politik im Kalten Krieg" (Achtung: für eine Terminbuchung bitte Rücksprache halten, da die Gespräche nicht am 29.9. stattfinden können und individuell abgestimmt werden müssen.)

👉🏽 David Leupold: "Im Schatten der Ukraine: Krieg und Frieden im Südkaukasus und seiner Umgebung"

Die Gespräche finden digital statt – jeweils von 10:00–11:30 Uhr und 16:00–17:30 Uhr. ⌚

Hier geht's zur Buchung der Zeitslots: https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/ueber-uns/neues/veranstaltungen/book-a-scientist

03/09/2026

With our colleague Abdoulaye Sounaye

27/08/2026

We are excited to announce our winter colloquium series 2026/27 on Political Order beyond Westphalian Statehood: Perspectives from Asia and Africa.

The decline and dismantling of empires and colonial states in large parts of Asia and Africa eventually gave way to the establishment of “nation-states” as the foundation of the international order of the 20th and 21st centuries. As many of these new entities fractured in the late 20th and 21st centuries, other bonds of solidarity (religious, ethnic, tribal) re-emerged, together with old and new visions of the tasks which political structures and social order are meant to ensure. While political theory has invested in the investigation of these “non-state actors”, what seems to emerge as a desideratum is a better understanding of the visions such actors have of the political and social order they are striving to establish, and how this relates to (pre-existing or newly created) social structures. What is the reach of the political order, how inclusive is it, and does it impact social structures? What new orders emerge out of these dynamics? While some conceptual formulations have resorted to "(dis)order" or "insurgency" in their attempts to make sense of these developments, we would like to ask which other characterizations help us understand these processes, their trajectories and impacts? And what are such non-state actors in different contexts?

Focussing on such processes in predominantly Muslim contexts without limiting itself to specifically religiously connoted projects, this lecture series examines which specific notions of statehood are articulated, and which worldly and otherworldly frameworks are invoked to legitimize them. This lecture series wants to investigate these notions, building on the ways in which they affect our theoretical and conceptual renderings of sociopolitical processes that shape the world today.

Organised by Ulrike Freitag, Stefan Kirmse, Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino, Ahmad Moradi, Anandita Bajpai and Abdoulaye Sounaye.

Lectures take place in person at 5pm at ZMO. Participation via Zoom is also possible.
More info: https://www.zmo.de/en/events/lecture-series/zmo-kolloquium-im-wintersemester-2026-27

22/08/2026

Warum Pakistan im US-amerikanisch-israelisch-iranischen Krieg strikte Neutralität wahrt, sich aber an einem gewissen Punkt wohl auf die Seite Saudi Arabiens wird stellen müssen, was zu großen innenpolitischen Verwerfungen führen wird: ZMO-Fellow Arash Beidollahkhani im Gespräch mit der FR,

Pakistan versucht zwischen den USA und dem Iran zu vermitteln. Mindestens vier oder fünf pakistanische Städte sind auf illegale Energielieferungen aus dem Iran angewiesen.