Tag Archives: refugees

Podcast on Scholars at Risk

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In December 2025, Leila Dedial and myself spoke to anthropologist and podcaster Ian M. Cook and to scholar-at-risk Ibrar Mirzai about the Hilde Domin Training Programme (HDTP) we host at the University of Konstanz, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

The Hilde Domin Programme, of which the Training Programme is one part, is a scholar-at-risk programme composed of fellows from across the world, who all had to flee their countries of origin. They now study for their MA degree or write their PhD thesis in Germany, while remaining involved in and committed to their home countries. Many came with their families, others had to leave their loved ones behind …

The Hilde Domin Training Programme is a one-year programme for all fellowship holders, to be studied alongside their degrees. It is composed of two semesters of online webinars and three face-to-face workshops which take place at the University of Konstanz. The goal of the programme is to transmit knowledge that will help our fellows better understand Germany and the EU, to acquire new academic and personal skills, take part in professional coaching events and support them in making informed decisions about their future career.

With Ian and Ibrar, Leila and I also discussed the predicaments that come with being a scholar-at-risk in Germany in regard to issues of integration, mental health, ‘imposter syndrome’ and potential risks deriving from changes in the political landscape in Europe.

You can find this first episode of Ian’s new series “Displacing Universities” on the anthropology platform Allegra Lab and also directly on Soundcloud.

Illustration by Ibrar Mirzai.

Boat is a man

2024 has been the deadliest year for migrants trying to cross the Channel in small boats to reach the UK, with 69 deaths reported (Refugee Council 2025). British politicians have been referring to the circumstances under which people migrate to the UK as “the small boat crisis“ and subsequently made a “small boat deal“ with countries such as Ruanda, to which they wanted to ship people to.

Before the Labour party came to power, they accused the Tories of “having lost control of small boat migration“. Now, that they are in power, they claim that there is “no nice or easy way of doing it“. Getting rid of people who came by boat…

But what if boat were a man?

I recently bought a small booklet filled with Walter Benjamin’s short stories. Tales out of loneliness is its subtitle. In it, there is a 1-page story entitled How the Boat was Invented and Why It Is Called ‘Boat‘. It follows a similar pattern as Benjamin’s short story on Why the elephant is called ‘elephant‘ that immediately precedes the story about the boat.

The storyteller. Tales out of loneliness. Walter Benjamin. Verso Books 2023.

Here’s how Boat’s story goes:

Before all the other people, there lived one person and he was called Boat. He was the first person, as before him there was only an angel who transformed himself into a person, but that is another story.

So the man called Boat wanted to go on the water — you should know that back then there was a lot more water than today. He tied himself to some planks with ropes, a long plank along the belly, that was the keel. And he took a pointed cap of planks, which was, when he lay in the water, at the front — that was the prow. And he stretched out a leg behind him and navigated with it.

In this manner he lay on the water and navigated and rowed with his arms and moved very easily through the water with his plank cap, because it was pointed. Yes, that is how it was: the man Boat, the first man, made himself into a boat, with which one could travel on water.

And therefore — of course that is quite obvious — because he himself was called Boat, he named what he had made ‘boat‘. And that is why the boat is called ‘boat‘.

(Walter Benjamin, 26 September 1933; published posthumously)

The “small boats crisis” is Boat’s crisis, the crisis of man. This is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. Because they do not know why the elephant is called ‘elephant‘ either.

Philosophy saves lives.

Paper boat made out of a book page (photo by: Maddy Freddie, pexels.com).