[INVITATION] Reading Session on: Global Geopolitics and the Challenge for Area Studies & Academic Freedom
Muziru
Date: Saturday, 14th February 2026
Time: 7PM – 9PM
Venue: Baitul Azizah, Presint 18, Putrajaya Bandar Filsafat
Presenter:
Professor Dr. Claudia Derichs
Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU)
Federal Republic of Germany
Register at: https://forms.gle/NjzEhmspx7rV4pd9A
Geopolitical trajectories of the 2020s have left their marks on scholars’ mobility, collaboration, and research designs. In Germany, Russia’s offensive war in Ukraine and the Gaza war in the wake of the October 7 attacks of 2023 form critical junctures not only for the study of international relations, but for scholars of all disciplines. Federal policies such as the installation of a security architecture for all academic institutions in the country (and for universities in particular) affect the possibilities of student exchange and fieldwork abroad. China’s designation as Europe’s “systemic rival” translates into the securitization of numerous research projects, and the German state’ commitment to Israel’s security as the nation’s Staatsräson (“reason of state”/“raison d’etat”) has raised new questions about academic freedom. The input for the Reading Session will tackle these issues and provide personal (and hence subjective) views of the state of academic freedom in Germany. It draws inferences from the increasing restriction about the conditions for conducting Area Studies.
Program
7.00-7.30PM : Maghrib prayer
7.30-7.40PM : Welcoming speech by Moderator, Dato’ Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa
7.40-8.30PM : Presentation by Prof. Dr. Claudia Derichs
8.30-8.55PM : Discussion
8.55PM-9.00PM : Conclusion by Moderator
9.00PM : Tea
Organized by: Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF)
Speaker’s Biography
Dr. Claudia Derichs, PhD, is the Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU), where she also holds the chair for Professor of Transregional Southeast Asian Studies. She has studied Japanese and Arabic in Bonn, Tokyo and Cairo, leading to a PhD in Japanology (1994, University of Bonn, Germany) and a professorial dissertation (“Habilitation”) in Political Science (2004, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany). She assumed professorships in Political Science at the universities of Hildesheim and Marburg before moving to HU Berlin and fully committing to the field of Area Studies. Her research covers gender, religion, political violence, and social movements in Japan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East/West Asia, looking particularly at transregional connections in and beyond the “long 1960s”. She is a board member of Berlin Forum for Transregional Studies (TraFo) and works towards new orientations in Area Studies. In 2017, she published the monograph Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation (Routledge 2017). The latest open access publication is a co-authored article for the journal New Area Studies (vol. 5 no. 1, 2025), titled “Process Geographies and a Fourth Wave of Area Studies”. It can be accessed here.