A Teaching and Writing Stipend for the Winter Term 2025-26
Off University is inviting proposals for a contribution of 90-minutes to its online lecture series “Cities at War”. This series is jointly organized by scholars from war-torn cities focusing on how military conflicts and their aftermath have produced and re-produced their cities. Scholars who are working in the broad field of urban studies and who are directly affected by war, displaced and/or on the move can apply for a stipend of 1200 GBP.
Contribution to the online lecture series “Cities at War” should adhere to a shared conceptual framework: Much of urban research on cities at war discusses the effects of armed conflict on urban space and the militarization of urban space in the same breath. While we acknowledge that similar urban forms may emerge and are interconnected (e.g., via technology), we do not think that the militarization of urban space that often is a result of the “war on terrorism” or some iteration of it is directly comparable to the experience of cities where inhabitants are experiencing/ have recently experienced war or armed conflict.
Focusing on actual physical destruction and ruination (Navaro 2009), we’ll first take account of the everyday life in a city at war (Fawaz et al. 2012, Harb 2017) and the practices and strategies of inhabitants to cope with the present and protect war-related memories .
Second, recognizing the emerging continuum between war and peace in many war/conflict cities perceivable as a “practice of continuously planning for war in times of peace” (Bou Akar 2018), we want to contribute to a better understanding of the practices of planning a city at war and their interplay with processes of reconstruction (Sharp 2023), displacement, commodification and musealization (Genç 2021). The increasingly blurred “division between war and peace” (Sharp/Kelegama 2025) is our focus when we examine specific cities at war.
A third cross-cutting theme is the erasure of knowledge, heritage sites and memory that accompanies war both through physical destruction and the loss of archives and records, and through the nation building often entailed in post-conflict rebuilding in the form of re-engineering cities and their histories.
What awaits the scholars in the Winter Term 2025-26
The online lecture series will be held on the Off University online learning platform during the 2025-26 winter term (14 weeks, October 2025 – February 2026). Selected lecturers will receive a total of 1200 GBP as an honorarium for their lecture and a short article on the lecture’s topic. The results of the lecture series will be compiled, discussed during a round table of all participating scholars in Mid-February, and published online.
Besides the delivery of the lecture and the article, we offer a day-long training in September on teaching in a digitally secure and inclusive way.
Off University’s online-learning platform Moodle offers a virtual classroom including chat options, video live streaming, virtual blackboard, file sharing and a whole range of collaborative learning activities. Over the last seven years, we have organized 80 interactive online courses certified by universities with recognized ECTS credits.
The Online Lecture Series “Cities at War” is accredited by the Institute for Social Sciences at Humboldt-University. All regular and successful participants will receive a 3 ECTS point certificate. Off University is open for everybody to join, not only participants enrolled at a university.
The Online Lecture Series got awarded with the Seminar Series Award by the Urban Studies Foundation. Proposals will be selected by the representatives of organizations that received the Seminar Series Award: Off University, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Beirut Urban Lab, Rojava University and the Diyarbakır Association for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets (DKVD).
Application Requirements for Stipends:
- Being politically (1) persecuted and/or displaced and (2) unemployed and/or in material need
- Ability to give a 45-minute lecture in English and join in the 45-minute discussion with other participants and students afterwards.
- Instructors are required to act in accordance with the Off University Code of Conduct, which can be found here in German, English and Turkish.
Application Materials for Courses (in English)
This link leads you to a questionnaire that asks:
- Why do you depend on this stipend of 1200 GBP? A short statement of persecution, displacement, material condition and/or immigration status (max. 500 words)
- A title and a short abstract for a 45-minute lecture on your city. It should include a suggestion for a reading of 10-15 pages in english that students and participants to the lecture series can read in preparation. (max. 500 words)
- Full-CV with detailed past teaching and research experience
Application Process
Your security as a scholar has first priority to us. We therefore save your data only on our own servers and only communicate with you in secure ways: The messaging app Signal and Proton Mail. In order to notify you about the outcome of your application, please leave your Signal-handle, the number you use on Signal or a proton mail address only.
Please answer the questionnaire and upload your CV here.
If you have questions, you can reach us on our proton mail account at mail@offuniversity.org or on Signal with the handle @offuniversity.17. Please note, that for reasons of confidentiality all communication will take place only via Proton and Signal.
All applications should be submitted by August 3rd, 2025 at midnight (Central European Time). You will be notified via Signal or Proton mail by August 13th, 2025 about the outcome of your application.
References:
Navaro-Yashin, Yael (2009): Affective spaces, melancholic objects: ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(1): 1-18.
Fawaz, Mona, Mona Harb and Ahmad Gharbieh (2012): Living Beirut’s security zones: An investigation of the modalities and practices of urban security. City and Society 24(2): 172-195.
Harb, Mona (2017): Diversifying urban studies’ perspectives on the city at war. in: The City at War. Reflections on Beirut, Brussels and Beyond. https://www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/the-city-at-war-reflections-on-beirut-brussels-and-beyond/diversifying-urban-studies-perspectives-on-the-city-at-war/ (last retrieved 12.02.2025)
Bou Akar, Hiba (2018): For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers. Stanford University Press.
Sharp, Deen (2023): Reconstruction as violence and forced displacement in Syria. in: Karen Jacobsen & Nasim Majidi. Handbook on Forced Migration. Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 285-292.
Genç, Fırat (2021)Ç “Governing the Contested City: Geographies of Displacement in Diyarbakır, Turkey.” Antipode 53 (6): 1682–1703.
Sharp, Deen and Kelegama Thiruni (2025): Call for Papers “Urbanisation of Conflict and Conflict Urbanisation Series”. https://www.urbanstudiesonline.com/callforpapers/the-urbanisation-of-conflict-and-conflict-urbanisation/ (last retrieved 12.02.2025)
