February 5, 2026 | 6:30 pm   Alte Aula 

Rooted and Uprooted: Suffering and Agency in the Story of the Nation 

Nationalism derives its emotive power from its embodiment. Almost everything depends on the arbitrary process of natural reproduction in a particular body, in a particular national territory. Without the birthright to a privileged nation, one has to cross borders and survive incredible hardship and discrimination to attain those privileges. In this talk, I want to address the rooted national body first and then go on to discuss the uprooted body of the outsider, the refugee and the rebel. Both the rooted and the uprooted body are sites of suffering. First, the national body. The nation is sovereign in its territory that has to be defended at all costs, including warfare. The nation’s biography is largely a series of territorial events that have either threatened its sovereignty or established it. The constant re-working of this narrative (with its cast of villains and victims) acquires an almost collective Freudian dimension. Those who win are rooted; those who lose are uprooted. Many of the losing party leave the country and become refugees. The fiction of national borders and the rootedness of those who belong to it creates the related fiction of the uprootedness and ultimate non-belonging of those who have fled. This dual fantasy is constantly reworked and elaborated as a cause of suffering for both those who belong and those who do not.

February 5-6, 2026 | Villa Köstlin 

Politics of Division: Legal and Knowledge Regimes 

The politics of division is increasingly taking hold in our societies, both in established and relatively new democracies. It exploits existing and newly created social divisions and cleavages, deploying them to consolidate power and maintain the status quo. Examples include changing varieties of ethnonationalism based on exclusive citizenship. Likewise, gender and sexuality politics have become sites of hostility, everyday policing, and legal repression. The politics of division is further intensified by overlapping crises like climate change, migration, the intrusive state, neoliberalism, and right-wing populism. The two-day conference “Global Encounters: Politics of Division” at the University of Tübingen, hosted by the College of Fellows and the Global Encounters Platform on February 5–6, 2026, brings together academics, researchers, policymakers, activists, and professionals to explore interdisciplinary approaches to the politics of division. Paper presentations interrogate the interplay between law, policy, and knowledge, examining how norms are institutionalized, authorized, and legitimized through legal and knowledge regimes. The conference explores how differences are reinforced by regimes through laws and histories, how anti-democracy gains appeal through rhetoric, and how resistance and restorative justice can be effective responses.

The College of Fellows Lecture Series invites international fellows and Tübingen academics to present their research and network. Every month, fellows and international guest researchers from the University of Tübingen present their research findings. If you are interested, please contact infospam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de 

Systemic Harm and Collective (Un)Awareness. 
Forms of Agency and the Diffusion of Responsibility in Structural Violence.
Insights from Phenomenology, Violence Studies, and Liberation Philosophy

January 29-30, 2026 Villa Köstlin | Rümelinstraße 27 Program

Abstract

Systemic harm often transcends the boundaries of deliberate action, unfolding instead through bureaucratic and structural dynamics that elude traditional notions of responsibility and individual accountability. From social injustice (e.g. housing discrimination, gender inequality, racialized policing, etc.) to predatory economics to environmental devastation, structural harm often arises without clearly identifiable agents directly causing it (or directly seeing themselves as the cause of it)— and yet it remains deeply entangled with social practices, group habits, and institutions whose preservation, transformation, or abolition presupposes multiple forms of agency: free and forced, habitual and deliberative, individual and collective. 
Ever since the Norwegian sociologist and peace researcher Johan Galtung coined the term “structural violence” in the late 1960s, it has been common to assume that such violence is characterized by an absence of intentionality. Recent sociological and philosophical studies have challenged this assumption, sometimes suggesting that the concept of structural violence has been poorly theorized, is essentially flawed, and should be dismissed. From a phenomenological perspective, however, while the idea of violence ‘without subject’ must be questioned, the need for conceptual tools to describe forms of systemic harm caused by collective human agency remains essential. 
This workshop invites critical reflection on the ambiguous spaces between shared responsibility, individual accountability, and different forms of collective agency in cases of harm caused in systemic ways. How can we make sense of accountability and complicity when violence is embedded in the very structures that shape social life? Can resistance and liberation emerge from within these same structures? And what resources do phenomenology, liberation philosophy, and violence studies offer for rethinking ethical response in contexts where agency is obscured or indirect? Can subjects be complicit of their own (or others’) oppression without being accountable—or accountable without full-blooded agency? In what ways does interdisciplinary violence research provide conceptual resources for rethinking these tensions? 

February 4, 2026 | 6-8 pm   Villa Köstlin (and online) 

This reading group explores texts from the feminist philosophy tradition, considering their significance for issues of social justice as well as for broader philosophical questions.

The CoF Lunch Talk Series invites international fellows and Tübingen researchers to exchange ideas in a relaxed atmosphere during the lunch break. Each month, a fellow presents his or her research. The CoF Lunch Talks take place in the Villa Köstlin. 

The CoF Lunch Talks in the winter term 2025/26 can be found here.

February 12-13, 2026 Villa Köstlin

The Dark Sides of Rights of Nature

This international workshop explores the often-overlooked “dark sides” of Rights of Nature (RoN), bringing critical perspectives from the Global South and North into dialogue. While RoN are frequently celebrated for their transformative potential, the workshop foregrounds growing skepticism about their political, legal, and ideological implications. Key sessions address Nature, Rights, and the Far-Right in Germany and Rights of Nature, Human Rights, and Far-Right Ecologism, examining how legal innovations around nature intersect with nationalist, exclusionary, and authoritarian discourses. Contributions further explore the coloniality of (inter)national law, the racialization of nature, Indigenous critiques, and the appropriation of RoN by states, corporations, and political movements. Under the guiding question Back to nature?, the program also investigates far-right lifestyles, environmental activism, land-use conflicts, and everyday practices in Germany and Europe. Case studies from Latin America and Europe address ecofascism, Indigenous (land) rights , tensions between human and non-human rights, and the academic hype surrounding RoN. The workshop brings together scholars, practitioners, activists, and journalists to critically reassess Rights of Nature within contemporary power relations.

In cooperation with Riccarda Flemmer (Institute of Political Science, UT), Matthias Kramm (Ethics, Philosophy and History of the Life Sciences, UT), Léonie de Jonge (Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism (IRex), UT)