Dear members of the UdK Berlin,

Once again this semester, we cordially invite you to take part in a diverse series of workshops and events on the topics of anti-discrimination and diversity. 

In addition to these events, a special series of readings awaits you as part of the #wessenfreiheit (#whosefreedom) action days organized together with the Women’s and Equal Opportunities Office.

One highlight of the program is the online lecture Puncturing: Making spaces, conversations and perspective on expanding creative work and life by Ramon Tejada, who invites us to question dominant narratives in design and explore decolonizing perspectives.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Unless otherwise stated, the workshops and readings are open to both students and employees of the UdK. 

The workshops and the online talk can only be attended after prior registration. Please note that places are limited (early registration is therefore recommended).
Participation in the lectures is possible without registration.

Registration for the events at: antidis@udk-berlin.de 

Reflections on Practice for Power-Critical Collaboration in the Arts and Cultural Sector
Date and Location: May 27, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. Aula R. 201, Hardenbergstr. 33, 10623 Berlin
Language: German

Content: The workshop begins with an input on power-critical perspectives and their relevance for transdisciplinary collaboration in art, science, and culture. We will explore questions such as: Who has access to knowledge and resources? Who decides what knowledge is considered valid? And whose voices are systematically ignored or excluded?

Building on current debates around colonial, racist, gender-based, socio-economic, and ableist exclusions, we will examine unequal power relations at the intersection between academia and activist as well as civil society contexts.

In the practical part follows, we will apply these approaches to the participants' concrete experiences, questions, and needs, in order to jointly identify and explore power-critical spaces for action.

Workshop Facilitator: Dr. Pegah Byroum-Wand works from both an academic and museum-practice perspective on museums and activism, power-critical collaborations and advisory board work, as well as discrimination-sensitive and diversity-oriented organizational development. She offers workshops and university seminars, gives lectures, and provides consulting for organizations on these topics. Among other roles, she was a research associate for science communication and participation in the joint project “Museums and Society – Mapping the Social” at the Technical University of Berlin. In that context, she established and led an advisory board composed of Berlin-based activists. This work resulted in the edited volume MachtKritikKollaboration. Praxisreflexionen zwischen Aktivismus, Museum und Universität (“PowerCritiqueCollaboration. Reflections on Practice between Activism, Museum, and University”), which she conceptualized and edited, and which was published in March 2025 by Yılmaz-Günay Verlag. Previously, she worked at the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States, the Brücke Museum Berlin, and in the academy programs of the Jewish Museum on topics such as diversity, migration, and colonialism.
 

Approaching Conflicts Restoratively
Date and Location: June 3 and 4, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Aula, Grunewaldstraße 2–5, 10823 Berlin
Who should attend? This workshop is only for students.

Content: In increasingly repressive and authoritarian times, it becomes ever more important to find ways of coexistence and solidarity. Conflicts, problematic incidents, and interpersonal violence are a "normal"—albeit unfortunate and painful—part of this. It is unrealistic to believe we can eliminate them entirely. However, we can approach them differently: constructively, restoratively, transformatively. Doing so strengthens both individuals and communities.

The workshop offers foundational knowledge on conflict dynamics, the psychology of victimization and harm-doing, and introduces core elements of Nonviolent Communication as well as basic methods of restorative circle practices. The goal is for participants to develop a basic understanding of conflicts and how to address them restoratively, while gaining some tools to handle such situations independently and with a sense of resolution in the future.

Workshop Facilitator: Rehzi Malzahn is a certified mediator in criminal cases and an expert in Restorative Justice and prison abolition. She has authored two books and numerous articles on the topic and has been supporting people through painful conflicts for about 10 years.
 

Anti-Muslim Racism – Recognize, Reflect, Act in Solidarity
How does anti-Muslim racism manifest in the university context – and how can we counter it together and in solidarity?
Date: June 19, from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. Room 411, Einsteinufer 43–53, 10587 Berlin
Who should attend? This workshop is intended for interested students and staff of UdK Berlin.
Language: German

Anti-Muslim racism is a widespread form of discrimination that appears in the media, politics, the workplace, and at universities. In this interactive workshop, we will critically examine how this form of discrimination manifests and operates. Together, we will explore the question: What responsibility do we carry as members of the university – and how can we act in solidarity?

Planned workshop content:

• Introduction to anti-Muslim racism
• Identifying stereotypes, everyday racism, and structural discrimination
• Reflecting on personal perspectives and societal power relations
• Strengthening tools for solidarity-based action: civil courage, allyship, and collective responsibility

Solidarity means: not looking away, but acting together. For a university that protects diversity and actively stands against anti-Muslim racism.

Workshop Facilitator: CLAIM – Alliance Against Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate – Batoul Abu-Yahya is a social scientist from Berlin and an educational consultant in the areas of democracy, Europe, anti-Muslim racism, intersectional racism, and crisis management. At CLAIM, she is responsible for outreach and empowerment programs for multipliers affected by racism.

Puncturing: Making spaces, conversations and perspective on expanding creative work and life -  Ramon Tejada
Date and location: June 25, from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Online (After registration attendees will receive confirmation email to join event).
Who should attend? This lecture is intended for interested students and staff of UdK Berlin.
Language: English

Content: Puncturing is a talk/conversation around a collection of perspectives and ideas on expanding creative work and life to include, insert, and elevate what has often been left in the margins of design history, theory, and discourse. Ramon Tejada’s work invites us to rethink the structures and values that shape design today. His approach to decolonizing design is not about offering fixed definitions, but about creating — and sometimes claiming — space for BIPOC individuals to be essential, active participants in shaping the field. 

For Tejada, decolonizing is about “physical visibility, structural change, representation (not tokenism), acknowledgement (of ideas, land, values that were stolen, repressed, etc), giving up (taking) space, “responsible expansion” (recognizing what design has ignored and not valued) of narratives, points of view, perspectives, stories, theories, ideas, geographical references (not just of Northern European and American lineages, which erases everybody else’s identity (colonialism), a diversity of lineages (not just the Bauhaus and all it’s grandchildren), etc. It is about unearthing, shifting the glance, [and] decentering; giving agency, being vulnerable, making mistakes, thinking about our communities (not the design community), thinking about mom/dad/grandparents/your neighbor, our chosen families, acknowledging not knowing and making the periphery the center.”1 

Speaker: Ramon Tejada is a DominicanYork, born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City (of Dominican-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Latinx descent) designer and educator based in Providence, RI* in the USA. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice focusing on collaboration, inclusion, unearthing, and the responsible expansion of design, a practice he has named “puncturing.” Tejada is an Associate Professor and Department Head in the Graphic Design Department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Ramon is a 2024 recipient of the Vilcek Prize in Design. Ramon Tejada, initiated the Decolonizing, or puncturing, Design Reader (2018) a communally shaped reader that is open-access and ongoing that aims to making design narratives inclusive.     

1 Tejada, R. (2024). DIGGING THROUGH THE DECOLONIZING, [OR PUNCTURING, OR DE-WESTERNIZING, AND SHIFTING], DESIGN READER, 2021 EDITION: an in-progress, collaborative project. In A Line Which Forms a Volume 5 (p. 29). MA Graphic Media Design Press. https://press.magmd.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ALWFAV-5.pdf  

#wessenfreiheit  - Action day

The action day #wessenfreiheit is a nationwide day of action by the German art universities. Since 2018, actions under the hashtag #wessenfreiheit have taken place annually at art universities, addressing institutional and societal power within the art system. Gender-show-gap, gender-pay-gap, (sexualized) abuse of power, censorship…

#wessenfreiheit raises the urgent question: “Who has access to the system and who is excluded?”
 

Schwarz. Deutsch. Weiblich. – Natasha A. Kelly

Why feminism must demand more than gender equality
Date and location: June 2, from 18:00 to 20:00, Georg-Neumann-Saal, Einsteinufer 43–53, 10587 Berlin
Who should attend? This lecture is open to all interested persons.
Language: German/English

Content: Far too often, white women tend to understand feminism one-dimensionally and view oppression as singular. What is missing is the understanding that Black women and Women of Color are simultaneously exposed to different forms of discrimination. In her new book, Schwarz. Deutsch. Weiblich., Natasha A. Kelly weaves together the stories of Black women who have lived in German-speaking countries for over four centuries with her own biography. She shows how elitist thinking and racist prejudices have long shaped Western feminist discourse, ultimately preventing a feminism that is truly open to all.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Natasha A. Kelly is a communication scientist and sociologist, author and editor, curator, and multimedia artist. Her focus areas include Black German history, Black feminism, and Afrofuturism. Dr. Kelly has taught and conducted research at many national and international universities, including as a Max Kade Visiting Professor for German Studies at the University of Rhode Island (USA) and as a Visiting Professor for Media Studies at the University of Tübingen. Her artistic works have been presented at the Berlin Biennale, the German Historical Museum, and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. As chairperson of the non-profit association Black German Arts and Culture e.V., she is the artistic and academic director of the first institute for Black German art, culture, and its related scholarship in Germany. She is also co-director of the pan-European Black European Academic Network (BEAN) and a founding member of the international collective Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM). Her most recent publication, Schwarz. Deutsch. Weiblich. Warum Feminismus mehr als Geschlechtergerechtigkeit fordern muss, was published in August 2023 by Piper Verlag.

More info about her can be found on her website: http://www.natashaakelly.com
 

Identitätskrise – Alice Hasters

Date and location: June 16, from 18:00 to 20:00, Aula, Grunewaldstraße 2–5, 10823 Berlin
Who should attend? This lecture is open to all interested persons.
Language: German/English

Content: We are climate-conscious. We have a culture of remembrance. Freedom and peace are Western virtues. That’s what we tell ourselves about our society and who we are. But is that story really true?

We buy clothes produced in sweatshops, shy away from confronting our family histories, and our society is plagued by right-wing extremism and police violence. Our self-image doesn’t align with reality. No wonder we’re experiencing an identity crisis.

It’s time to face this identity crisis and find out who we really are, says Alice Hasters — because only then can people and societies change.

Speaker: Alice Hasters was born in 1989 in Cologne. She lives and works in Berlin as an author and publicist. She has worked for the youth program Funk, developed social media formats for Tagesschau and RBB, and hosted shows for Deutschlandfunk Nova. Together with Maxi Häcke, she co-hosts the podcast Feuer & Brot, where they discuss feminism and pop culture. Her first book, Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten, ranked 5th on the 2020 paperback nonfiction bestseller list. In recognition of her educational work on racism, she was named Cultural Journalist of the Year in 2020.