News

“Reimagining the Frontier” Workshop at the University of Zurich

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 22:00:00 GMT

The Political Geography Unit kicked off the Fall Semester (FS2024) with the “Reimagining the Frontier” workshop organized by Jasnea Sarma and Asebe Regassa on September 6 2024. The workshop brought scholars from interdisciplinary backgrounds, and research experiences on the evolving understanding of ‘Frontiers.’

Ethiopian Protest Music

Mon, 06 May 2024 22:00:00 GMT

The songs of Hachalu Hundessa reveal the struggles of the Oromo people

International Burma Studies Conference

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 23:00:00 GMT

Together with Georg Winterberger at the UZH Institut für Sozialanthropologie und Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (ISEK), Shona Loong co-organised the International Burma Studies Conference between 9 – 11 June 2023 at the University of Zurich.

‘We have big ideas, but only small words’: The post-war geographies of civil society and community in Karen State

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 23:00:00 GMT

The Political Geography Group at GIUZ has a strong interest in understanding how war has people and the relationships between them.

Rethinking self-determination: colonial and relational geographies in Asia

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 23:00:00 GMT

Together with Alex Manby and Fiona McConnell, Shona Loong has published an article in Territory, Politics, and Governance, entitled “Rethinking self-determination: colonial and relational geographies in Asia”.

The Cultural Life of Democracy in Sri Lanka Workshop

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 23:00:00 GMT

This workshop brought together over 20 scholars from Sri Lanka, Europe and the USA.

Sceptical Geography (Für eine skeptische Geographie)

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 22:00:00 GMT

Panel on Critical Geography at DKG'23, Frankfurt

“The Intimate and Everyday Geopolitics of the Russian War Against Ukraine”

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 22:00:00 GMT

PGG Postdoc Sven Daniel Wolfe collaborates with a group of critical Ukrainian and Russian scholars to publish a forum article for the flagship journal Geopolitics.

“Urban Geopolitics From Northeast India”

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma from PGG was invited for a talk based on a forthcoming paper titled “Entangled Exclusions in Frontier Cities: The urban geopolitics of northeast India”.

Intervention Set: Walking Methods in Political Geography

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma publishes an intervention set on ‘walking methodologies’ with Olivia Mason and James Sidaway in Political Geography.

Intimate Politics in South Asia Workshop 2023

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 22:00:00 GMT

PGG organised the “Intimate Politics in South Asia” workshop

‘We don’t eat those bananas’: Chinese plantation expansions and bordering on Northern Myanmar’s Kachin borderlands.

Thu, 04 May 2023 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma's co-authored paper published by Eurasian Geography and Economics with Allesandro Rippa (University of Oslo) and Karin Dean (Tallinn University) documents the relationship between Chinese-funded plantation expansion and refugee life words on the China-Myanmar borders.

Political Geographies of Sports Mega Events and Urbanisation

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 22:00:00 GMT

PGG postdoctoral fellow Daniel Wolfe has published a new article titled “The Juggernaut Endures: Protest, Potemkinism, and Olympic Reform” in the journal Leisure Studies.

TALK: "Living with borders: a trans-Asian ethnography of mobility across Myanmar’s borderlands with India and China."

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 22:00:00 GMT

Dr Jasnea Sarma was invited by the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University to give a talk titled “Living with borders: a trans-Asian ethnography of mobility across Myanmar’s borderlands with India and China.”

Author meets Critics Panel: Schwierigkeiten mit der kritischen Geographie"

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 23:00:00 GMT

The «Author Meets Critics» panel discussed Benedikt Korf’s new book “Schwierigkeiten mit der kritischen Geographie”.

Talk “Being Young and Mobile on an Asian borderworld”

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma delivered one of the keynote talks for the NIAS (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies) Generation Asian Conference jointly organized by the University Of Iceland and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University Of Copenhagen.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 22:00:00 GMT

China’s Belt and Road (BRI) Fact Sheets in collaboration with the Roadworks project (Fribourg)

Workshop: Thinking Futures from Elsewhere

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 23:00:00 GMT

The workshop “Thinking Futures from Elsewhere” organised by Sidharthan Maunaguru and Benedikt Korf at Collegium Helveticum invited scholars to engage future/s conceptually and ethnographically by bringing temporal and spatial axes along with the notions of vulnerability, fragility, unknown, uncertainty, frontiers, limits and thresholds.

B/ordering Infrastructures: How Chinese infrastructures have ordered Myanmar’s borderlands

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 22:00:00 GMT

A research article, titled ‘Infrastructures and b/ordering: how Chinese projects are ordering China–Myanmar border spaces’ scrutinises the nexus of bordering practices and infrastructure developments in the borderlands between China’s Yunnan province and Myanmar’s Kachin state. The paper (open-access) is based on long-term ethnography along and across the China–Myanmar border conducted by Karin Dean, Jasnea Sarma (PGG) and Allesandro Rippa between 2000 and 2019.

New Book by Benedikt Korf: "Difficulties with critical geography"

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 22:00:00 GMT

In this new book «Schwierigkeiten mit der kritischen Geographie» (difficulties with critical geography), Benedikt Korf takes a skeptical look at a practice of critique that works with premature generalizations and moral claims, while exempting itself from (self-critical) scrutiny. Over-confidence in its own judgement lets this form of critique brush over ambivalences, grey zones and antinomies that characterize politics and political struggles.

Sri Lanka: Poisonous Ethnocracy

Benedikt Korf — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 13:27:22 GMT

Sri Lanka is currently undergoing a tremendous economic and political crisis. Fuel scarcity was so severe that people went on the streets to protest against the government. On 9 July, Sri Lanka’s then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee amid a big crowd of protesters entering his residency.

The anatomy of a gold-rush

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 22:00:00 GMT

In a new paper, titled, ‘The anatomy of a gold-rush: Politics, uncertainty and the organisation of artisanal mine work and labour in Zimbabwe’, Melusi Nkomo explores how artisanal mining gold rushes are taken as socio-political spaces.

New visiting fellows

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 22:00:00 GMT

Professor Harshana Rambukwella, Open University of Sri Lanka, and Professor Sidharthan Maunaguru, National University of Singapore (NUS), are visiting the Department of Geography and are hosted by the Political Geography Unit.

The emotional geopolitics of China's BRI in Myanmar

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 22:00:00 GMT

A new paper “Sovereign anxiety in Myanmar: An emotional geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative’, co-authored by Shona Loong with Mary Mostafanezhad and Robert Farnan, traces uncertainties over China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Myanmar.

The Irony of Development

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:00:00 GMT

Benedikt Korf recently published an article about The irony of development: Critique, complicity, cynicism at SAGE Journals.

"Kamituga | Digital Gold" , an exhibition by Gabriel Kamundala

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 22:00:00 GMT

"Kamituga | Digital Gold", is an immersive exhibition based on fieldwork by PGG's Ph.D. candidate Gabriel Kamundala. The exhibition was showcased at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich from Feb 11th, 2022 - June 6th, 2022.

Sri Lanka am Abgrund – wie kam es dazu?

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 09:20:26 GMT

Der Krieg in der Ukraine lässt viele andere Krisen in der Welt in den Hintergrund rücken. Zum Beispiel die Proteste in Sri Lanka. Benedikt Korf, Politische Geographie, spricht auf Radio SRF 1 zur aktuellen Situation.

A mega-road meets a remote-borderland: Research on the India Myanmar borderlands

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma from the Political Geography Group publishes ethnographic research that highlights the social, ecological, bureaucratic and ethnic life of a borderland that has become the site for an Indian infrastructural mega-project called the Kaladan Multimodal Road. She highlights the voices of engineers, labourers, local officials, refugees, ethnic minorities and ‘undocumented’ indigenous communities to explore the aspirations, erasures and effects of spectacle-making by large-scale infrastructural frontier projects. Read more on this research here.

Urban Development and the Making of Frontiers in/from Addis Ababa/Finfinne, Ethiopia

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 22:00:00 GMT

In an article, “Urban Development and the Making of Frontiers in/from Addis Ababa/Finfinne, Ethiopia”, Asebe Ragassa from the Political Geography Group (PGG) and his colleague Dr. Teshome Emana Soboka publishes research historicizing frontier-making in Ethiopia linking it to the formation of the modern Ethiopian state in the late-19th century through wars of conquest. Read more about this research here.

Remaking and Living with Resource Frontiers in Myanmar

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 22:00:00 GMT

Jasnea Sarma from the Political Geography Group (PGG) along with her colleagues Hilary Faxon (University of California, Berkeley) and K.B. Roberts (York University) guest edits and introduces a new special issue, “Remaking and Living with Resource Frontiers in Myanmar.” Their introduction critically examines pre- and post- 2021 Feb military coup, extractive economies and political geographies in Myanmar and its Asian neighbourhood. Read more about the issue here.

Frontiers of Extraction and Contestation in Ethiopia

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 22:00:00 GMT

Asebe Regassa from the Political Geography Group (PGG) publishes research on extractive mining, dispossession and resistance around the MIDROC Laga-Dambi Gold Mine in southern Ethiopia.

Scientific images that ask questions

Communications — Fri, 13 May 2022 11:00:51 GMT

The SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2022 casts an unconventional light on research conducted in Switzerland. One of the winning images is by Stephan Hochleitner, a postdoc in Political Geography.

Zu gut, um wahr zu sein

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 11:16:41 GMT

Die State-Building-Missionen des Westens sind gut gemeint, aber sie scheitern regelmässig an ihrem moralisch überhöhten Anspruch, schreiben Benedikt Korf und Christine Schenk in einem Feuilleton-Artikel in der NZZ.

Migrant labour exploitation in agriculture

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 23:00:00 GMT

In collaboration with colleagues Ilaria Ippolito and Mimmo Perrotta, Timothy Raeymaekers launches the edited volume (in Italian) 'Braccia rubate dall’agricoltura: Pratiche di sfruttamento del lavoro migrante'.

New Book out: The Black Mediterranean

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 23:00:00 GMT

In collaboration with Black History Month at NYU, Florence, Timothy Raeymaekers and a collective of scholars launched the edited volume “The Black Mediterranean”.

"Reversing the Gaze": A new research project in Political Geography

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 08:19:08 GMT

How can scientific concepts and theories, developed in the Global South, help us understand phenomena in the Global North? This is the main question that guides the four-year research project co-led by Benedikt Korf.

Gatekeeping Access

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Former master student Mengina Gilli, her supervisors Gretchen Walters and Muriel Côte, co-authored a paper in the journal Land entitled “Gatekeeping access: Shea land formalisation and the distribution of market-based conservation benefits in Ghana’s CREMA”

Arcane Geopolitics

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 23:00:00 GMT

This forthcoming paper in Political Geography, co-authored by Benedikt Korf and Rory Rowan, discusses what is at stake for a critical geography in appropriating the reactionary thought of thinkers, such as Heidegger or Schmitt.

Geografe nüme schlafe!

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 23:00:00 GMT

In the 1980s, a group of geography students rebelled against their teachers at the Department of Geography in Zurich.

In memoriam of Professor Shahul Hasbullah

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 23:00:00 GMT

On 28 and 30 January, Benedikt Korf gave a lecture in memoriam of Professor Shahul Hasbullah at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Colombo and Kandy respectively.

New position for Muriel Côte at Lund University

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 23:00:00 GMT

Muriel Côte started as Senior Lecturer at Department of Geography, Lund University

Master graduations

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 23:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to our Master students that graduated in December 2019 and February 2020!

EU Hotspots

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 23:00:00 GMT

On 22 January, Timothy Raeymaekers participated in a workshop at Basel University on the infrastructure space and the future of migration management, with a focus on the EU Hotspots in the Mediterranean border space.

Border performances

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 23:00:00 GMT

On 3 and 4 December 2019, Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary visited us from Grenoble university to share her research on border art and performance with our staff and Master students.

Calais Jungle

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 23:00:00 GMT

On 29 October 2019, Sarah Mallet visited us from Oxford University to talk about her research project on the Calais Jungle at La Lande, which has been exhibited at the Pitt Rivers Museum until November 2019.

Der Grenzgänger

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 22:00:00 GMT

Der Politische Geograph und GIUZ-Alumnus Michael Hermann pendelt zwischen der öffentlichen Rolle als Politvermesser und seiner unternehmerischen Tätigkeit.

Summerschool 2019: Governance at the Edge of the State

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 15:27:02 GMT

Alice Kern, Konchok Gelek, Christoph Kaufmann, Christoph Vogel, Benedikt Korf, Tim Raeymaekers, Rony Emmeneger, Tobias Hagmann and Muriel Côte will participate to the summer school on "Governance at the Edge of the State", and some will teach at the Master Class, that the Political Geography Unit co-organises with the Department of Food and Agricultural Economics at the University of Copenhagen, DK.

Muriel Côte at Leipzig University’s Centre for Spatial Transformations under the Global Condition

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 15:20:56 GMT

Muriel Côte was invited as a visiting researcher at Leipzig University’s Centre for Spatial Transformations under the Global Condition, and gave a lecture entitled “Making concessions in Burkina Faso: rethinking the “extractive enclave” under a global goldmining frontier” on July 3rd, 2019.

Muriel Côte’s paper on citizenship and forest decentralisation in Burkina Faso

Sun, 11 Aug 2019 22:00:00 GMT

The paper examines how the “politics of belonging” that is expressed through claims of autochthony, relates to citizenship.

Tim Raeymaekers presents the MIC|C project website on the Black Mediterranean

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 22:00:00 GMT

The website of the MIC|C project, that Tim Raeymaekers has been working together with over the last five year in Basilicata, Italy, is up.