WORKSHOP: Transnational Entanglements of Racial Anthropology: History and Legacy, Sept 11-13, 2025

HAR is happy to share information about an exciting upcoming international workshop from our friends at HOAN-EASA. 

Transnational Entanglements of Racial Anthropology: History and Legacy, will take place in Berlin and online between September 11 and 13, 2025 (all times CET), bringing international scholars worldwide. 

The workshop has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, DFG (German Research Council), and HOAN, and will be livestreamed, enabling our online HOAN viewers to listen to the various presentations to ask questions through the chat.

Overview: Racial anthropology, emerging in (post-)colonial contexts, first developed in Europe and North America before spreading globally. Responding to the renewed calls for overcoming the legacies of colonialism, imperialism and racism in anthropology, the workshop examines the transnational afterlives of scientific racism in all fields of anthropology. This workshop will explore the ways in which racial anthropology took shape—and spreaded—through global scientific networks and how we should confront the enduring legacies of racism in science. Departing from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin (KWI-A), this workshop will discuss these questions and trace the transnational entanglements of racial knowledge in science and politics since the twentieth century.

See program and more information below OR in the attached pdfs:

Participation: 

Thursday: https://nomadit-co-uk.zoom.us/j/89804339971?pwd=sXLEU1B5XWvRu3Q1FurWPRhpOARWz7.1

Friday: https://nomadit-co-uk.zoom.us/j/85683553165?pwd=bQhYgSrXVJkGEHyRjQZ2nmGVCR0X7L.1

Saturday: https://nomadit-co-uk.zoom.us/j/82901405394?pwd=TZlPi3aSQbApNYZQAqUca128t5qSCF.1

We are looking forward to seeing you!

HOAN Convenors

Program:

Thursday, Sept. 11

14:15–15:00 Introduction: Dr. Manuela Bauche (FU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik (GU Frankfurt) & Dr. Thiago Pinto Barbosa (U Leipzig)

15:00–16:30 Paper Session 1:

·        Weicheng Huang (FU Berlin) – From “Racial Crossing” to “Migration and Isolation of Culture”: Tao Yunkui (1904–1944) and the Reassembling of German Anthropology on China’s Ethnic Frontier

·        Dr. Hoda Bandeh-Ahmadi (U Michigan) – tba

Discussion: Dr. Udo Mischek & Dr. Lisa Gottschall 

17:30–19:00 Keynote Lecture (PUBLIC EVENT, FU Berlin, Ihnestraße 21, Room A):

·        Prof. Dr. Hans-Walter Schmuhl (U Bielefeld), author of The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945: Crossing Boundaries (2008)

Friday, Sept. 12

9:00–10:30 Paper Session 2:

·        Prof. Dr. Katharina Schramm (U Bayreuth) – The Politics of Lambs’ Hair: Circulating Ideas about Race and Phenotype in Colonial Karakul Breeding

·        Lukas Alex (U Bayreuth) – Epistemic One-Way-Street: Eugenic Knowledge and Population Genetics in the Legacy of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

Discussion: Prof. Dr. Carola Sachse & Lisette Jong

13:30–15:00 Paper Session 3:

·        Lisette Jong (U Amsterdam) – Old Bones in New Databases: Historical Insights into Race, Statistics, and Ancestry Estimation in Anthropology

·        Prof. Dr. Carola Sachse (U Vienna) – Uyghurs in the Spotlight of Evolutionary and Forensic Genetics: The End of a Long-standing German-Chinese Scientific Collaboration

Discussion: Prof. Dr. Katharina Schramm & Lukas Alex 

15:30–17:00 Paper session 4:

·        Dr. Lisa Gottschall (ÖAK-IKW, Vienna) – Anthropological Research on “Colonial Soldiers” in WWII POW Camps: A Preliminary Report

·        Prof. Dr. Marius Turda (Oxford Brookes U) – Racial Science in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust: The Case of Dr Gh. Stroescu

Discussion: Prof. Dr. Amos Morris-Reich & Dr. Katja Geisenhainer

18:30–20:00 Book reading and discussion (PUBLIC EVENT, FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum) 

 ·        An Indian student in a German school of racial anthropology and eugenics: Presentation of the book Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve (2024), with authors Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, discussed by Lisette Jong.

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Saturday, Sept. 13

9:30–11:30 Paper Session 5:

·        Prof. Dr. Amos Morris-Reich (Tel Aviv U) – Race and Antisemitism: a Historical and Philosophical Re-evaluation

·        Dr. Katja Geisenhainer (Frobenius Inst.) – The Relationship between early German-language Ethnology and Physical Anthropology

·        Prof. Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik (GU Frankfurt) –  From Dahlem to Ankara: Afterlives of Racial Science, Knowledge Transfer, and the Turkish Anthropology

Discussion: Prof. Dr. Marius Turda, Dr. Hoda Bandeh-Ahmadi & Dr. Thiago Pinto Barbosa 

12:00–13:00 Wrapping Up