GraL 2024: Year in Review

Wishing you a powerful new year from the GraL team!

2025 marks the beginning of the third project year in GraL, and this year, too, many small and large milestones lie ahead in our research process. But at this point, in keeping with the tradition of the blog post we began last year, we would like to look back together on 2024, highlighting some of the activities of the GraL team.

In spring, on two evenings, we met with our critical friends from the international advisory board for a presentation and discussion of the GraL research project in a digital meeting. The advisory board consists of Prof. Alisha Heinemann (University of Bremen), Prof. David Gillborn (University of Birmingham), Prof. Jeff Bale (University of Toronto), Dr. Lilia Monzó (Chapman University), Prof. Natascha Khakpour (University of Teacher Education Vienna), and Prof. Vini Lander (Leeds Beckett University). After a presentation on selected aspects of our research, we exchanged views on theoretical, methodological, and methodologic questions, such as discussions of the challenges in the context of German-language teacher education and racism research with reference to Critical Race Theory.

In March, we took part in the DGfE Congress 2024 on the theme of Crises and Transformations in Halle. There, in various formats, we were able to engage with topics such as anti-discrimination-oriented teaching in higher education or the social entanglement of individuals in the perception and processing of crises and transformations from perspectives in educational science, educational theory, or capitalism critique. From these three days, we doctoral researchers took away many impulses and questions for our own dissertation projects.

Research on socially relevant topics has a certain explosiveness on different levels. In our case — in educational research on racism — we repeatedly reflect on possible reactions to the elements of the research process that we communicate publicly. Thankfully, with support from Scicomm-Support, we were able to pursue these reflections further in a workshop in April and gain another perspective on the explosiveness of science communication. The realistic simulation of a hate storm on social media, as well as the simulated reactions to it by various actors in the workshop by Scicomm-Support and conducttr, further stimulated our thinking about how one can act rather than merely react in this fast-moving digital communication environment. The simulation was also very helpful for reflecting on what it means to make certain findings public in certain places. Questions about how to shape responsible science communication continue to accompany us in our research practice.

Continuing in a mode of reflexive engagement with our research practice, in July we had the opportunity to organize a two-day workshop with Prof. Annita Kalpaka. Together with the research projects WueRD and WinRa-West, as well as other staff members from AG 10 Migration Pedagogy and Anti-Racist Critique, we were able to enter into a reflexive discussion of our own role as researchers in the field of anti-racist research. You can find the report on the workshop “Reflections in Anti-Racist Research” by Prof. Kalpaka under the hyperlink.

In addition to GraL’s internal discussions, analyses, and meetings about empirically collected material in the subprojects of the interview study and the document analysis, three multi-day cooperation meetings between GraL and the BMBF-funded junior research group “Continuities and New Configurations of Institutional Racism in Schools” (KoNIR) also took place this year. The meetings in Bielefeld and Flensburg served for joint analysis of data material, discussion of preliminary findings, and discussion of method(olog)ical questions. In addition, together with KoNIR we worked on the concept development for our joint podcast project. For example, we discussed the extent to which defining a target audience could itself be problematized within a podcast episode, in order to discuss questions of representation as well as external and self-attributions in relation to societal relations of power and domination. We are looking forward to further productive and culinary meetings with our colleagues in Flensburg.

Although still north of Bielefeld, but rather toward the east, two GraL members, together with the BMBF-funded project ORAS, gave a lecture on “(Institutional) Racism and Anti-Racist Critique in Teacher Education and Schools. GraL and ORAS”. Our cooperation partners Dr. Michael Dobstadt and Johannes Köck organized the event as part of the “Network for Language Education at TU Dresden,” which allowed us to present and discuss initial research impressions.

In September, Jocelyn Dechêne, an associate member of GraL, in cooperation with David Untersmayr from the Paulo Freire Centre Vienna, Dr. Birge Krondorfer from Frauenhetz, and Dr. Jan Niggemann from the Austrian Institute for Adult Education, organized the panel discussion “The ‘Act of Love’ as an ‘Act of Liberation’?!” at the Audre Lorde Studio, C3 – Centre for International Development in Vienna. Jocelyn Dechêne opened the discussion with a keynote on her understanding of political love from anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and feminist perspectives.

In 2024, GraL was also invited by the staff office of the Federal Government Commissioner for Anti-Racism and Minister of State, Reem Alabali-Radovan, to the “Forum against Racism” in Berlin. The forum is a long-standing nationwide body that provides space for exchange between state and civil society actors on different aspects of racism. From keynotes to project and practice reports, as well as workshops and panel discussions, there was a rich variety of formats on different topics related to racism in the field of schools. As part of the workshop “Anti-Racist Professionalization of Teachers,” GraL project staff member Roya Saadati Fashtomi gave a keynote on the importance of anti-racist sensitivity as an element of pedagogical professionalization and presented some interim impressions from GraL. Moderated by Çiğdem İpek (from the staff office of the Anti-Racism Commissioner), participants discussed challenges and obstacles to implementation in establishing anti-racist approaches in schools and teacher education together with Prof. Meike Bonefeld (University of Freiburg), who also gave a keynote. The workshop offered valuable food for thought and concrete perspectives for further developing anti-racist pedagogical practice.

All in all, it was a very eventful year. We are grateful for the opportunity to conduct such a research project in the current times against the backdrop of the (global) political situation. In doing so, we also continually engage with the question of how one can research relations of violence under conditions of violence.