Responding to a growing need to anchor analysis of the current violent crises in historical perspectives, the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI) organized a workshop on 16 and 17 June 2021. The conference organisers had identified a number of gaps in the academic literature on Cameroon’s legacy of violence. Digging deeper into the history, consequences and lateral aspects of the current violent conflict between Anglophone separatists and the government remains an important task and the contributions of the series provide exactly this.

The ABI conducted an exploratory study on transnational training partnerships between Ghana and North Rhine-Westphalia for the Mercator Foundation - the state has a long-standing cooperation for sustainable development with the West African country. While a team from the Bertelsmann Foundation explored the demand on the German side, the ABI focused primarily on actors and institutions in Ghana.

The Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut offers an annual summerschool “Contested Governance” from 2019 to 2021. DAAD In-Country/In-Region scholarship holders (Master or PhD students) in countries of the Global South are invited to Germany for four weeks. The summerschool targets political science or other social sciences students and focuses on the multiple challenges in the field of governance.

In a recent study, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected refugees and refugee protection in six countries in West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa, namely Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe, during the first year of the pandemic up to and including February 2021.

In the research training group ‘Empires: Dynamic Change, Temporality and Post-imperial Orders’ researchers can focus on the topic of transformation of empires. How do empires change over time? How does their collapse affect the politics, economies and societies of the states and regions emerging out of them? How do media like films, novels or journals respond to the dissolution of empires? How do they shape post-imperial traditions? Imperial pasts strongly affect contemporary politics and public discourse, as the conflicts in post-colonial Africa show. Eleven professors whose research has revolved around these questions over many years will supervise several innovative research projects of the junior researchers.

This conference aims at a deeper understanding of the relationship between democracy and authoritarianism beyond the borders of the nation state. It examines both the authoritarian turn in the democratic environment and the "prevention of democracy" in states such as China. The conference design is guided by two principles: (1) dialogue between young scholars and senior researchers and (2) multidisciplinary dialogue. It is organised by scientists from the ABI and the University of Freiburg and will take place at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies from 17^th to 19^th march 2021.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic migrant communities have become immobile – stuck in the destination countries, or unable to continue their journeys in transit or in origin countries. This project brings together a collection of essays that seek to spell out how migrant communities in the Global South have been affected by, and reacted to the pandemic.

The project “Making Infrastructures Global” addresses the issue of contemporary infrastructure projects that often look alike, produced as they are by planning agencies that operate across the world in public-private partnerships. Based on three cases of energy infrastructure projects in East Africa, North Africa and Latin America, this project analyses the contested power dynamics triggered by attempts at making infrastructure global.

An international consortium of research institutes in Basel, Freiburg im Breisgau and Strasbourg will hold three consecutive EUCOR Cross-border workshops on "The trouble with the state. Boundaries and Networks in Africa" and invites young researchers to exchange ideas and experiences.