News of the GIGA Doctoral Programme

On March 15, Dastan Jasim defended her dissertation “Civic Culture Without A State: Kurdish Civic Culture in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria between State-Control and Resistance” at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Congratulations!

Katharina Fietz presented her paper "Racial Peer Effects at Work: Evidence from Worker Deaths in Brazil" at the RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics in Essen in February and the BeNA 20-Year Jubilee Conference in Berlin in March. In April, she will do a research stay at the Paris School of Economics, where she will be hosted by the Development Research Group. In addition to presenting her work at the internal seminar, she will also participate in the 19th Doctorissimes Conference and the EUDN PhD Workshop on Development Economics.

Hager Ali directed from March 25-28 the ECPR Joint Sessions Workshop "Hybrid Regimes and Authoritarianism: The Surge, Survival, and Fall of Non-Democratic Governance (ecpr.eu)"., where she also presented her working paper "Entrenching Military Power through Constitutions: Introducing the REPEAL Database". In addition, she presented the findings of her GIGA Fokus "The War in Sudan: How Weapons and Networks Shattered a Power Struggle" at the Schweizer Studienstiftung Mittagsveranstaltung online | Ein Jahr Krieg im Sudan – eine Lagebeurteilung. Moreover, she had a few interviews in the last weeks: with Deutsche Welle on the threat of famine in Sudan and the new developments in Libya, with EPD on the obstacles to Libya's attempt at democratization, and with Al Jazeera English on the Sudan Armed Forces' new military offensive and use of drones. Finally, she was interviewed and revised the script of a YouTube video on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Désirée Reder also attended the ECPR Joint Sessions, organized by Hager Ali, and presented her paper “Audience-Sensitivity of Political Discourse in the Legitimation of Repression”. On March 14, she discussed the situation of Nicaragua and its relationship with Russia and other autocratic regimes in the Podcast „Wirtschaft Welt und Weit“ we discussed. And on April 8, she was interviewed by the Deutschlandfunk Kultur on the rationale behind Nicaragua’s court case against Germany at the ICJ.

Ardahan Gedikli attended from April 5 – 7 the Historical Materialism Conference 2024 in Istanbul and presented his dissertation in progress, The Political Economy of Akp’s Foreign Aid: A Regional Assessment of Middle East and North Africa.

Indi-Carolina Kryg was interviewed on March 26 by the Deutsche Welle which quoted her for the article "Secuestros: un negocio “lucrativo y cotidiano” en México".

Julia Köbrich was interviewed on March 12 by Deutsche Welle Africa on interreligious relations in Sierra Leone, which resulted in the article Religion in Africa: High tolerance for other faiths. Moreover, she collaborated with Elisabeth Gerberding in a research comic that illustrates some of what they learned from their work in Togo and Sierra Leone on determinants of interreligious peace.

Hamid Talebian was invited by the Hertie School Africa Policy Club on April 9 to speak about ‘The strategic goals of Middle Powers and their rising importance in the African continent’.