Fri, 6 November 2026 | 3:00 pm – 4:45 pm 
Alte Aula (Münzgasse 30)

Moderation: PD Dr. Niels Weidtmann
The event will be held in English.

Anti-science efforts, political pressure, economic interests and other influences can put academic freedom under pressure.

Together with international research fellows from our recent BW Early Career Research Fellowship program, we will discuss the fundamental value of academic freedom and the threats it currently faces worldwide.

Our fellows will share their respective personal and disciplinary perspectives and provide a multifaceted view of the current situation. Together, we will speak about the value of academic freedom and how it can be protected.

Further reference: Science & Innovation Days program

11 November 2026 | 6:30 pm
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin)

Abstract:
In 1983 I began fieldwork in Germany, asking not how two states diverged after 1949 but how two generations narrated the losses set in motion by 1945. What I found reshaped the question: alongside Mitgliedschaft — membership, the passport one holds — ran Zugehörigkeit, a subjective belonging independent of official status.

I open with my father, dying in a Wisconsin nursing home, unexpectedly singing Heine's "Lorelei" to a German friend, confronting me with an inheritance I had spent my life disclaiming. I track my family's nineteenth-century emigration from Germany, a loss never quite transformational, before turning to Arnim, an East Berlin research subject across four decades, whose friendship taught me that ethnographic knowledge is inseparable from the relationships, and losses, through which it is made.

The talk closes with my decision to make Berlin home — not through membership finally acquired, but through Verwandtschaft: kinship built not from blood or soil, but from a shared working-through of loss.

John Borneman, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, received his Ph.D. from Harvard (1989) and taught at Cornell (1991 – 2001), and Princeton (2001 – 2022). His longterm fieldwork has been in Germany and Syria, and he has written extensively on relation of the state and law to intimacy and practices of care. In 2013 he was awarded the Boyer Prize for contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology. His most recent book is I Was Married to a Horse, and other Tales of an Accidental Anthropology, published in 2026.

12 November 2026 | 6:00 pm
Alte Aula (Münzgasse 30)

The Lecture takes place as Keynote Lecture for the Interdisciplinary Workshop "AI Alignment: Perspectives in Law and Ethics" (12 – 13 November 2026).
The Lecture will be held in German. 

Abstract: 
Whether non-human entities, particularly autonomous algorithms, can be regarded as social actors or even recognized as legal persons is currently the subject of intense debate. Teubner proposes linking theories of emergence with theories of personification. To do so, the law must move beyond its deeply rooted “juridical humanism.” Given the immense risks posed by algorithmic decision-making, there is today a significant accountability gap with regard to the substantial harm that algorithmic failures can cause. Only legal personification makes it possible to establish effective frameworks of responsibility and liability for such systems.

20 November 2026 | 12:00 pm
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin)

Abstract: 
In 2025, Victoria became the first Australian jurisdiction to formalise a Treaty with First Peoples, acknowledging that Aboriginal sovereignty was never ceded. The Statewide Treaty Act 2025 followed a decade of negotiations. It aims to create a ‘renewed relationship’ between the State and First Peoples and advance their inherent rights and self-determination. Nonetheless, Treaty has been established at a time when Indigenous rights have been heavily politicised (nationally and globally). 

In 2023, the Australian Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which would have provided constitutional recognition of First Peoples in Australia, was defeated. The Victorian Opposition, currently leading the polls, has since vowed to abolish Treaty if they win the next election in November. Parliamentary debates have become increasingly polarised. In this presentation, I examine the friction between First Nations sovereignty and western democratic institutions, how Treaty is functioning in practice, and the consequences for this ‘renewed relationship’ when structural reform becomes temporary and threatened.

Rachel Macreadie is a Global Encounters Fellow at the University of Tübingen, Germany. She previously worked as a Parliamentary Committee Researcher for the Parliament of Victoria (2007 – 2025), and in migration policy for the International Organization for Migration in Vietnam and the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (as an Australian Aid Youth Ambassador for Development). She has a PhD in Translation Studies (University of Melbourne/KU Leuven) and a forthcoming book on crisis communication policies and practices (Routledge, 2027).

12 – 13 November 2026
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27/Villa Köstlin)

Organisation: Dr. Hans Lind, PD Dr. Jörg Noller, funded by Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.
The workshop will be held in English.

About the Workshop: 
Artificial intelligence is increasingly permeating socially sensitive domains such as healthcare, finance, and public administration. Since AI systems are not autonomous moral or legal subjects, they require AI alignment: the process of aligning machine systems with human values and legal norms. This workshop examines alignment not merely as a technical challenge, but systematically as a normative, epistemic, and institutional process. In doing so, it expands the predominantly technology-driven debate by introducing a foundational theoretical perspective on morality, legal subjectivity, and practical reason. Experts from philosophy and law will present and discuss these issues.

As part of the workshop, the Keynote Lecture on 12 November 2026 will be held by Professor Gunther Teuber “Algorithmen als soziale Akteure und juristische Personen?” (Goethe-University Frankfurt). The Lecture will be held in German.
 

Please read all detailed information and the workshop program here.
Alle Informationen auch hier: www.alignment-workshop.net

Tue, 3 November 2026 | 7:00 pm – 1:00 am
German-American Institute Tübingen (d.a.i.) | Karlstr. 3, Tübingen

with CoF New Horizons Fellow Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss as panelist 
 

On the evening of the U.S. Midterm Elections, the German-American Institute (d.a.i.) invites you to the grand finale of its series “What Unites U.S.?”. As polling stations across the United States close and the first results begin to come in, experts will discuss live what is at stake: Will the Democrats succeed in wresting control of Congress from the Republicans, or will Donald Trump consolidate his power base for the final two years of his presidency? And what will the outcome of this election mean for Germany and Europe, as well as for the transatlantic alliance?

Through live connections to the United States, music, and a lively evening program, the d.a.i. will accompany the unfolding developments throughout the evening in search of answers to the question that has occupied us all year long: What Unites U.S.?

View detailed information and the event's program on the d.a.i. website.

10 – 12 November 2026 
College of Fellows (Rümelinstr. 27 / Villa Köstlin)

In cooperation with the Research Training Group (RTG) 3105 'Figurations of the Precarious in the Global South', the College of Fellows will be  hosting the upcoming Capstone Seminar “Critical Perspectives on Precarity Studies” with DFG Mercator Fellow Ritu Vij.
The Capstone Seminar is open to international doctoral students who were selected prior to the via an open Call for Applications.

Seminar Outline:
Discussions of precarity traverse the humanities and social sciences. From concerns with the lived experience of precarity in anthropological discourse and its representations in literary and cinematic archives, to the political production of precarization as a governmental technology of rule, the sociological transformation of the nature of work, and theoretical, philosophical accounts of precarity as an ontological condition of life, the vocabulary of precarity/precariousness/ precaritization addresses multiple dimensions of vulnerability in the 21st century. 

This seminar maps some of the dominant lines of inquiry in precarity studies, with the aim of introducing doctoral researchers to the promise, ellipses, and limits of contemporary thinking on precarity. Key to our discussions will be the notion of the human that anchors contestations about liberal imaginaries of ‘repair,’ and their refusal in practices of survivance by precaritized populations in the Global South.

About Ritu Vij: 
Ritu Vij is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. Her research lies at the intersection of social and political theory, with a focus on political economy and international political theory. In recent years, she has principally engaged the problem of precarity in International Relations and Social Theory, and is known for her work on how precarious lives and subjectivities are shaped by global political and economic processes, as well as for her contributions to debates on subalternity, modernity, and social justice. 

Her publications include the volume Precarity and International Relations (co-edited, 2021), the Special Issue Precarity: Aesthetic and Poetic Explorations’ (co-edited, 2025) and influential articles on precarity, globalization, and political subjectivity, such as “Broken Passages: From the Subaltern to the Precariat” (2025) and “The Global Subject of Precarity” in (2019). Her ongoing work includes a co-edited collection on Political Imaginaries of the ‘Slum’, an article on “Reimagining Precarious Futures”, and a book manuscript on Rethinking Subalternity/Precarity in the Post-Colony.