Members

Alice Hasters is an author and podcaster. She works for Deutschlandfunk Nova and rbb, among others. She speaks about feminism and pop culture with Maxi Häcke in her monthly podcast Feuer&Brot. In 2019, her book Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen aber wissen sollen was published by Hanser.

More information on Alice Hasters’ work can be found on the ZEIT website.

Nanna Ellen Amer is project manager at the Jewish Information Center Denemark. The purpose of the Jewish Information Center is to provide new analyses and prevent antisemitism by disseminating knowledge about Jewish history, life, and contemporary antisemitism through education and workshops for students and adults in Denmark.

Melanelle B. C. Hémêfa
Melanelle is a performing poetess, author, educational speaker, curator, consultant and facilitator. She loves words and words love her back. From this gift came her vocations – writing and speaking. She addresses issues such as Afrodiasporic life, self-determination, Black feminism, anti-Black racism, postcolonialism, and intersectional empowerment from a artistic, scientific, intersectional and emotional perspective, with a particular emphasis on anti-discriminatory/diverse approaches and processes that inspire reflective journeys. Melanelle speaks and thinks in French, German, English, and Ewe.

Peggy Piesche is head of the Department of Political Education and Plural Democracy at the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), focusing on diversity, intersectionality, and decoloniality. She is a board member of ASWAD (Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora) and has been rooted in the feminist movement of Black women* since 1990 via Adefra e.V..

More information on Peggy Piesche’s work can be found on LinkedIn and the bpb website.

Tobias Herzberg, was born in Hamburg in 1986 and studied acting in Hamburg and Zurich as a scholarship holder of the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehlich-Studienwerk. He came to Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater in 2016 with his solo play Feygele, after which he worked there as a dramaturg and artistic director of Studio Я. From 2019 to 2021, Tobias Herzberg was a dramaturg at the Burgtheater Wien and project manager of the Kasino venue. Since 2020, he has been pursuing a Master’s degree in Arts & Cultural Management at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He has held teaching assignments and mentorships at the HMT Rostock, the Amsterdam University of the Arts and in the winter semester 2021 for the first time at the Institute for Language Arts, Vienna. He has been part of the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) since May 2021.

Lea Wohl von Haselberg is a media scientist who researches and writes on Jewish film history and audiovisual cultures of memory. Since 2017, she has been leading research projects at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF on the working biographies of Jewish filmmakers and the emergence of the idea of ‘Jewish film’ in film culture. She is a co-editor of Yalta. Positions on the Jewish Present and part of the programme collective of the Jewish Film Festival Berlin Brandenburg.

More information on Lea Wohl von Haselberg’s work can be found on the website of the Babelsberg Film University.

Lin Hierse is a journalist and author. She works primarily on the topics of diversity in the media, intersectionality, and identity. Among other things, she writes the column Poetical Correctness for the taz.

Ibou Coulibaly Diop (1979, Segatta) ist Literaturwissenschaftler, Kurator und Dozent. Er ist Jurymitglied des Internationalen Literaturpreises des Haus der Kulturen der Welt und veröffentlicht regelmäßig zur Literatur der Transkulturalität und zur Bedeutung der afrikanischen Literatur in der Welt von morgen. Für den Berliner Senat erarbeitet er ein Erinnerungskonzept Kolonialismus und für die Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin ist er in der Kompetenzstelle Dekolonisierung tätig. Diop lebt und arbeitet in Berlin.

Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg ist Lyriker, Liedpianist und Autor des Buchs wiedergutmachungsjude, das 2023 in der Reihe Rohstoff bei Matthes & Seitz Berlin erscheint. Er arbeitet zu den Themen Identität, Antisemitismus und sexualisierte Gewalt. Mit Max Czollek kuratierte er die Reihe Lieder für das Jetzt (2022) beim Internationalen Musikfestival Heidelberger Frühling, in der zeitgenössische Lyriker*innen mit Musiker*innen der Liedszene neue Perspektiven auf textbasierte Kompositionen schaffen.

Anna Dushime is an editorial manager at the Berlin-based production company Steinberger Silberstein. She is a podcaster on the topics of politics, pop culture, dating and diversity. Her taz column “Bei aller Liebe” appears every fortnight.

More information about Anna Dushime’s work can be found on the taz website.

Andrea Hanna Hünniger is a journalist and author of Das Paradies – Meine Jugend nach der Mauer (2012), which tells the story of the 1990s in East Germany from the perspective of children. Her main topics include East German history and present and right-wing violence.

More information on the work of Andrea Hanna Hünniger can be found on the ZEIT website.

Hannan Salamat studied cultural and religious studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She is a co-founder and curator of the Munich arts festival ausARTen – Perspektivwechsel durch Kunst. She became head of the Islam department at the Zürcher Institut für interreligiösen Dialog in 2019. She has organised events, workshops, and conferences on Islam, anti-racism, postcolonialism, plurality, and feminism and advises city institutions in Zurich on these topics.

Melissa Kolukisagil studied political science, social and communications studies with a focus on political education. She has been active in the Berlin club and music scene for a number of years. That led to the development of her pet project, İç İçe, the first diverse festival for contemporary Anatolian music in Germany. In addition, she heads the project “Diversitygerechtes Ausgehen in Berlin”, a cooperation between “Eine Welt der Vielfalt e.V.” and the Clubcommision, through which she can effect structural change on a topic that matter to her: reducing discrimination in clubs and making the diversity of the music landscape more visible.

Deniz Utlu is an essayist, columnist, and writer. He founded the culture and society magazine freitext and studied macro-economics in Berlin und Paris. His debut novel, “Die Ungehaltenen”, was published in 2014 (Graf Verlag) and was adapted by the Maxim Gorki Theater for the stage in 2015. His second novel, “Gegen Morgen”, was released in 2019 (Suhrkamp Verlag). Utlu is the author of numerous essays that have appeared as features in newspapers and anthologies (most recently in: “Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum”, Ullstein, 2019). The writer has received numerous awards for his literary work.

Eșim Karakuyu is an intersectional feminist, blogger, empowerment trainer and artist and also works in artistic biographical research. As an artist, she focusses on patriarchal structures in her installations. She is involved in Muslim social and youth work and has co-founded a participatory, empowering project that arose in the course of pro-feminist youth work and is based on narrative biographical work with young women. She also leads workshops centered around the pluralization of cultural heritage.

Dr. Amma Yeboah is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. As a psychodynamic supervisor, she works with individuals, groups, and in structural organisational development. Her main areas of interest are the effects of structures of dominance on the psyche.

More information about Amma Yeboah’s work can be found on her website.

Luciano Waldman is an archeologist and historian. Hi was born in Brazil, grew-up in Israel and lives in Portugal. After studying his master’s in Acheology in Portugal, Mr. Waldman dreamed of restoring community spirit in the last Jewish quarter of Lisbon where, in the 14th Century, Jews lived. For that he purchased a place at the Jewish street and elicited fundings to start cultural and communitarian projects.
His Jewish Cultural Center aims to promote Portuguese and Sephardic Jewish culture through the preservation of both material and intangible Jewish memory and identity. Currently, the project is also affiliated to an international association called JCC (Jewish Community Center), which also offers communitarian services.
The goal of the project -besides to be a cultural corridor and to promote jewish history- is to support and implement a dialogue between different religions and minorities in Portugal.
Luciano hopes to bring an understanding of Luso-Jewish history and culture as well as to provide a venue where the Jewish community can share and learn more about other cultures and historical influences of the area.

Anja Fahlenkamp is a political scientist and diplomat. She studied politics, social sciences and international relations in London, Tel Aviv and Berlin. She is the founder of the non-profit organisation “Faiths In Tune”, organizing interfaith music festivals, concerts, workshops and youth exchanges since 2012 in several cities, among them London and Berlin, to promote respect and peaceful coexistence between people of all religions through music. She regularly speaks about her interfaith work at international forums and conferences, is part of several international interfaith networks and has received several awards for her commitment. In addition to her work with “Faiths In Tune”, she currently works as a consultant in the European Migration Policy Unit of the German Foreign Office.

Marina Chernivsky is a psychologist and head of the ZWST’s Competence Centre for Prevention and Empowerment, as well as managing director of OFEK e.V. , a counselling centre for anti-Semitic violence and discrimination. She works and researches as a lecturer and educational trainer on anti-Semitism and discrimination and is co-editor of the journal Yalta – Positions on the Jewish Present.

More information on the work of Marina Chernivsky can be found on the Competence Centre website.

Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç lehrt und forscht an Berliner Hochschulen u.a. zu (antimuslimischem) Rassismus, Antisemitismus, Orientalismus, Erinnerung und Subjektivierung sowie zu widerständiger Kunst- und Kulturproduktion. 2021 wurde er als Mitglied der Expert*innenkommission gegen antimuslimischen Rassismus in Berlin berufen. Sein Buch „Muslimaniac. Die Karriere eines Feindbildes“ (2021) erschien in der Edition Körber.

Prof. Ahmad Milad Karimi, born in Kabul in 1979, studied philosophy and Islamic studies at the Universität Freiburg im Breisgau and received his doctorate in 2012 with a thesis on Hegel and Heidegger. He is a full professor of Kalām, Islamic philosophy and mysticism at the Universität Münster. Karimi is deputy director of the Zentrum für Islamische Theologie at the Universität Münster and director of the international Muhammad Iqbal Research Centre. In 2019, he received the Voltaire Prize for “Toleranz, Völkerverständigung und Respekt vor Differenz” from the University of Potsdam.

Lamya Kaddor is a religious educator, Islamic studies scholar and publicist. She leads prevention programmes for young people against Islamism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia. These are some of the topics covered in her column Zwischentöne.

More information on Lamya Kaddor’s work can be found on her website.

Sonja Viličić is leading efforts to confront prejudice and discrimination while promoting active citizenship through educational initiatives that explore Jewish culture, history, and tradition. Her work benefits the Jewish community and contributes to a more inclusive society in Serbia.

Furthermore, Sonja is a Jewish educator at the European Union of Jewish Students, project leader of an educational project of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia, facilitator at MASA Leadership Center, advisory board member at Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, and member of the advisory educators’s group at Paideia – The European Institute for Jewish Studies.

Prof. Dr. Karim Fereidooni is a junior professor for the didactics of social science education at Ruhr University in Bochum with a focus on the critique of racism in educational institutions, school research and political education in the migration society as well as diversity-sensitive teacher training.

More information on Karim Fereidooni’s work can be found on his website and the website  of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Ruhr University Bochum.

Prasanna Oommen is a moderator, communications consultant, and speaker in the fields of culture, education, society, and media. She leads training courses, advises institutions, and moderates workshops and events to include plural perspectives. Her main topics are transcultural opening in the public and independent cultural landscapes, and culture of remembrance, educational equality and digitalisation, cultural education & diversity, urban development and diversity-sensitive communication.

More information on Prasanna Oommen’s work can be found on her website.

Sharon Dodua Otoo is an author, editor, and political activist. Otoo was awarded the Bachmann Prize in 2016 for the text Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin. In 2020, she gave the Klagenfurt Address on literature. Her debut novel Adas Raum was published in February 2021.

More information on Sharon Dodua Otto’s work can be found on her website.

Sarah Grandke is a curator and mediator at the denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof documentation centre currently under construction in Hamburg’s HafenCity. She is pursuing her doctorate on displaced persons from Eastern Europe and their memory initiatives in the immediate post-World War II period. Another focus of her work is the history of Sint*zze and Rom*nja in Germany and Eastern Europe.

More information about Sarah Grandke’s work can be found on the website of the University of Bonn.

Nina Prader is an artist, author, curator, and independent publish. Lady Liberty Press is the name of her independent micro publishing house for art, printed matters, and memorials. These include MemoryGames, a dialogical card game for commemorating the Shoah and most recently the Intersectional Commemoration Club Risograph Reader. She seeks to question, activate, and rethink cultural narratives.

Ibrahim Arslan is a political educator who has been involved in anti-racism work for many years. He is reporting from the perspective of those affected, at events, conferences and, above all, in schools as a political education speaker. Through the »Mölln Speech in Exile«, which he has been organizing together with his family and circle of friends since 2013 in memory of the racist arson attacks in Mölln in 1992, he established a new culture of remembrance in Germany that actively involves the relatives of racist murders and attacks and fights against forgetting.

Evalina Gomes Dias, afro-portugiesische Schwarze Frau, ist Menschenrechtsaktivistin, Gründungsmitglied und Vorstandsvorsitzende von Djass (Association of Afro-descendants) http://djass.pt/, einer im Mai 2016 in Lissabon/Portugal gegründeten antirassistischen Organisation, die sich für die Rechte von Schwarzen, Afrikanern und Nachfahren von Afrikanern in Portugal einsetzt. Im Namen der Organisation war sie für die Einreichung eines Projekts bei der Stadtverwaltung von Lissabon (2017) verantwortlich, das die Errichtung einer „Gedenkstätte zu Ehren der vom portugiesischen Reich versklavten Menschen“ in Lissabon vorsieht.
https://www.memorialescravatura.com/
Sie hat einen Master-Abschluss in Entwicklungsstudien vom Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE) und einen Bachelor-Abschluss in Management und öffentlicher Verwaltung vom Instituto Superior Ciências Sociais e Políticas (ISCSP).“

Ulf Aminde ist Künstler und Filmemacher und arbeitet in den letzten Jahren an den Schnittstellen von kritischer Erinnerung und Solidarität. Seit 2016 entwickelt er gemeinsam mit Betroffenen und solidarischen Initiativen – und mit Hilfe von Augmented-Reality-Technologien ein hybrides und filmbasiertes Mahnmal, das an die rassistischen Anschläge des NSU in Köln erinnert und die Geschichten und Kämpfe der Betroffenen gegen Rassismus und Antisemitismus sichtbar machen soll. An der Weissensee Kunsthochschule Berlin initiierte er 2016 die *foundationClass, die Fragen nach den Ein- und Ausschlussmechanismen von Kunsthochschulen stellt und ein Raum für Künstler*innen und Designer*innen ist, die aus ihren Heimatländern fliehen mussten sowie von Rassismus und Ausgrenzung betroffen sind. In seiner eigenen Lehre forscht er zu inklusiven Räumen und Methodiken des gestalterischen Unterrichts in den Grundlagen.

Cathy Del Rizzo is Training Coordinator at CEJI. With formal and non-formal educational backgrounds in training, youth work, art and theatre, Cathy has been working as an anti-bias trainer since 2014. She is currently focusing on training delivery, educational program development, network development and activities in Belgium. She has been involved in the design and implementation of numerous workshops, trainings and train-the-trainer courses on combating prejudices and discrimination.

Carmen L. Dege is a Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and works on identity politics and the role of self-transformation in the anthropocentric age.

More information on the work of Carmen L. Dege can be found on her website.

Tasnim Baghdadi is an art historian and artist. She heads the Mediation and Public Program Department at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich. She also works as a freelance author on topics related to the decolonisation of museums in German-speaking countries.

Dr. Cátia Severino is a researcher in Linguistics and an anti-racism activist. Her personal experiences within communities commonly referred to as “Retornados” (Returned), stemming from the significant diaspora of African nations formerly colonized by Portugal after gaining independence, prompt her to examine the experiences of Afro-descendant communities in Portugal within the framework of the Post-Colonial Diaspora. She focuses on the enduring legacy of colonial racism and colorism in shaping social and cultural hierarchies, as well as the formation of national identities and recognition of the place of belonging.

Benjamin Fischer is a network policy activist working on issues related to the information society, hate speech, and conspiracy ideologies. He was president of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) and is a board member of the World Jewish Museum and the Muslim Jewish Interfaith Coalition.

Emily Dische-Becker is a journalist, curator, and author. She researches and writes on the topics of anti-Semitism, cultures of memory, and Middle East politics. She is currently working on a volume of essays and supports the work of the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism.

Follow her on Twitter.

Bassam Ghazi is a theatre pedagogue, director and artistic director of the Import Export Kollektiv at Schauspiel Köln. As a freelance trainer, he offers trainings on the topics of diversity, post-migration, discrimination and empowerment for educational and cultural institutions.

More information about Bassam Ghazi’s work can be found on his website.

Anne Gersdorff works for the organisation SOZIALHELDEN e.V. as a consultant for the JOBinklusive project. With her educational work, she is committed to a self-determined life for people with disabilities and to an inclusive society.

More information on Anne Gersdorff’s work can be found on the Sozialhelden website and on the blog The New Norm.

Esra Küçük is the managing director of the Allianz Kulturstiftung, a non-profit foundation that initiates and promotes multilateral art, culture, and education projects in Europe and the Mediterranean region. She developed the idea of the Germany-wide educational programme Young Islam Conference. At the Maxim Gorki Theatre, she initiated the Gorki Forum as a place of discursive debate on diverse urban cultures, academics, and politics.

More information about Esra Küçük’s work can be found on the Gorki Theatre website.

Gianni Jovanovic is an activist and author. He is committed to the rights of Sinti*zze and Rom*nja and initiated the Queer Roma project, among others. He works on the topics of intersectional discrimination, the personal development of men, and empowerment & LGBTIQ.

More information on the work of Gianni Jovanovic can be found on his website.

Dr. Darija Davidović ist Theater-und Kulturwissenschaftlerin. Sie ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Forschungsprojekt „Ästhetisierung von Kriegsgewalt in der zeitgenössischen darstellenden Kunst“ am Institut für Praktiken und Theorien der Künste der Hochschule der Künste Bern. Sie promovierte am Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft der Universität Wien mit ihrer Dissertation «Umkämpfte Kriegsvergangenheit(-en): Geschichtspolitische Strategien im serbischen und kroatischen Gegenwartstheater“, die 2024 veröffentlicht wird. Sie war als Aktivistin an feministischen und antifaschistischen Projekten und Kampagnen in Deutschland, Österreich und Serbien beteiligt.

Prof*In Dr.*In Swantje Lichtenstein is an artist, poet, professor, and activist and works poetically in theory and theoretically in poetry, transgressing the arts conceptually, transmedially and performatively. She is a professor for aesthetic practice and text at the Hochschule Düsseldorf. Most recently published books: Am Ende der Weissheit / Verschalte Verbindungen (2021).

More information about Swantje Lichtenstein’s work can be found on her website.

Márcia Elisa Moser is a consultant for critical diversity and anti-discrimination work. From 2000 to 2006 she studied gender studies and religious studies in Berlin. From 2006 to 2014,

Márcia Elisa Moser was a research associate at the Institut für Religionswissenschaft der Freien Universität Berlin and at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. From 2016 to 2021 she held a position as a consultant in the areas of gender equality and diversity policies at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main.

Her focus areas are intersectionality, the relationship between religion-gender-sexuality, and body symbolism. More information on the work of Márcia Moser can be found on her website.

Ihre Themenschwerpunkte sind Intersektionalität, das Verhältnis von Religion-Geschlecht-Sexualität, und Körpersymbolik.

Muhammet Ali Baş is a language artist who works interdisciplinary on topics such as language, memory, representation and racism. In community projects in various constellations, he conveys artistic practices for empowerment and self-efficacy. He is currently curator and facilitator for outreach projects at Tangente St. Pölten in Austria, a festival for contemporary culture.

Melina Borčak is a freelance journalist and filmmaker working on (anti-Muslim) racism, genocide, feminism, and anti-racist media criticism, among other topics.

More information about Melina Borčak’s work can be found on her website, blog and Twitter.

Kübra Gümüşay, born 1988 in Hamburg, studied political science in Hamburg and London. She is the author of the bestseller Sprache und Sein (“Language & Being”), as well as the initiator of numerous campaigns and associations including the anti-racism campaign #SchauHin, the feminist alliance #ausnahmslos, and the campaign “Organised Love”. In 2018, Forbes magazine ranked her among the top 30 under 30 in Europe in the field of media and marketing.

More information about Kübra Gümüşay’s work can be found on her website.

Dr. Manuela Bauche is a historian and heads the project “Geschichte der Ihnestraße 22” at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. The project is developing a place of remembrance and information on the history of the KWI for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (1927-45), a history that connects to various histories of injustice and forms of dehumanisation.

More information about her work can be found on her website.

In addition to her artistic work Clara Laila Abid Alsstar organizes herself in collective associations. In her practice, she is focussed on the processing of situated knowledge about experiences of discrimination and social justice as well as the critical questioning of existing power structures. In doing so, she explores the question of how individual and family memories can be understood as part of an oral culture of remembrance in socio-cultural and socio-political entanglements and how these can emerge from the private into the public, their dividing lines being dissolved and deconstructed.

Mithu Sanyal is a cultural scientist, journalist, and author. She is a three-time recipient of the Dietirch Oppenberg Medienpreis of the Stiftung Lesen for her radio plays and features, primarily produced for WDR. Sanyal writes for various broadcasters and newspapers including BR, SWR, Deutschlandfunk, the Bundeszentral für Politische Bildung, DIE ZEIT, and taz. Her book “Vulva”, a cultural history of the female genitalia, was published by Wagenbach Verlag in 2009, with a new edition released in 2017. It was followed by publications on sexism (Orlanda Verlag, 2013) and sexual violence (Edition Nautilus, 2016). In 2021, she celebrated the publication of her first novel, “Identitti”, by Hanserverlag.

Dinah Riese is an editor in the domestic department of the taz. She mainly works on the topics of migration, the immigration society, right-wing violence, and reproductive rights. She has received several awards for her reporting on abortions and the criminal law paragraph 219a.

More information about Dinah Riese’s work can be found on the website of the taz.

Olesya Yaremchuk ist eine ukrainische Journalistin und Schriftstellerin, Mitglied des Ukrainischen PEN-Clubs. 2021 erschien ihr Buch „Unsere Anderen: Geschichten ukrainischer Vielfalt.“ in deutscher Übersetzung. Yaremchuk war Chefredakteurin des Choven Verlags, der Reportagen und Dokumentarliteratur herausgibt, aktuell unterrichtet sie an der UKU Universität Lviv. Sie ist Preisträgerin des Samovydets Literary Reportage Award und des LitAccent of the Year Award, beide in der Ukraine, sowie Finalistin des ADAMI Media Prize und des Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Award. Zudem ist sie Absolventin des Ostkurses 2014 des ifp in München.

Dr. Noa K. Ha ist kommissarische wissenschaftliche Geschäftsführerin am Deutschen Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung – DeZIM. Ihre Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind postkoloniale Stadtforschung, migrantisch-diasporische Erinnerungspolitik, kritische Integrationsforschung und Rassismuskritik.

Mehr Informationen zur Arbeit von Noa K. Ha auf der Website des DeZIM.

Daniel Kahn is a musician and artist. He founded the cult klezmer band The Painted Bird, which received numerous awards, and also works on other bands. At the Maxim Gorki Theatre he was and is active as a director, composer, lyricist, music curator, author, and actor.

More information on the work of Daniel Khan can be found on the website of the Gorki Theatre.