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On 20th-21st of October the CRC 1265 held its fourth international conference, this year titled “My City is a Battleground – Intersectionality and Urban Violence”. After two years of COVID restrictions, we could finally meet in person again, which in itself provided a cause for celebration as participants pleased to mingle with new as well as familiar faces. This year’s theme followed up on the CRC’s interest in socio-spatial conflicts, looking at the way intersectional tensions accompany processes of urban spatial refiguration. Taking its inspiration from decades of research on social inequality, class struggles, migration, violence as well as from intersectional feminist work, the conference turned its attention to intersectional experiences of violence and the way conflicts manifest intersectionally in and through urban space.

The environmental movement of Turkey has three decades of history. A culture of resistance was transferred from the first women's ecological resistance that attracted attention in the Bergama peasant movement to today's struggling women.[1] One of the areas of resistance discussed in this article is the Mount Ida (Kazdağları) Resistance, which is one of the most reported ecological struggles in the press in recent years in Turkey. [2]  Global companies came to this significant area, within the borders of Turkey's Marmara and Aegean regions, to search for gold with cyanide and destroy some regions with the state's approval. Resistance temporarily stopped the destruction and cutting of trees in the area.

Access to the internet has long been considered as essential as water and electricity supply; the UN declared online communication a human right several years ago. But despite its enormous social importance, not much is known about the administrative infrastructure behind it, i.e. who exactly controls the infrastructure of the net and what kind of ideas guide them. The subproject B02 “Control/Space” wants to change that, as project member René Tuma explains.

The mystery surrounding the harem has resulted in rumors of what life behind its high walls actually looks like. Images of beautiful women, sexual pleasure, endless overindulgence have been projected over the reality of this strictly maintained gendered space. It’s easy to dismiss its existence as an example of archaic gender boundaries which have no place in the 21st century. But why? By delving into historical reactions to the harem, we can explore how gendered spaces are constructed and how this bears on our understanding of “freedom”.

The far-right and anti-Muslim organization SIAN has repeatedly staged demonstrations as well as public Qu’ran-burnings in Norwegian cities in recent years. In August 2020, the organization held a demonstration at the Furuset center, which includes a subway station, a shopping center, a branch of the city library and the district administration. Furuset is part of and the central place in Alna municipal district in Oslo. In this area the population is shaped by migration, religious diversity, and socio-economic challenges. This blog post discusses how local people reacted to the demonstration and how, in the process, local identities and spaces were intersectionally negotiated, defended, and created.

This blogpost explores how counterpublic spaces act as intrinsically intersectional spaces shaped by power, history and emotion. In his celebrated 2019 book Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, Johny Pitts sets off by train from Sheffield on a five-month journey across continental Europe. Pitts’ mission seeks to explore the everyday life of black European experiences, beyond the “standoffish academic vernacular” (2019: 5) and to look for instances of “reverse colonialism” that highlight the long-term social and cultural presence and influence of blackness on European culture.

The CRC 1265 is currently experimenting with visual methods of analysis. This blogpost presents one such experiment. In this experiment, preliminary research findings were transformed into graphics by a designer, thus setting in motion an image-based process of discovery and reflection. It is shown how such a short-term collaboration between social science and artistic design has been carried out and what kind of potential it brought with it.

One likes to show guests something special, and depending on what they find interesting, the places usually selected range from museums, shopping malls, historic city centers, impressive nature reserves to the latest 5-star restaurant. In contrast, our visiting scientists from Chile are interested in how fruit production in Germany differs from that in their home country. For this reason, we, the CRC project A03 “Goods and Knowledge II” in cooperation with the DFG project “Apples and Flowers”[1], visited a fruit farm together with our guests Beatriz Bustos [2] , Patricia Retamal and Raúl Contreras.