The GraL project says farewell to its project member Roya Saadati Fashtomi as of September 15, 2026. Roya has been with the GraL project since its start and was responsible for the document analysis sub-study. With the completion of this sub-study, she is now moving on to a career in school teaching. We would like to thank her for her time with us and her outstanding work, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors!
The third episode of the podcast project by the GraL and KoNIR research groups focuses on the role of fear in the context of racism.
Our podcast series is now released! In conversations between the project staff from GraL and KoNIR, the focus is on speaking about racism, its supposed “normality,” and the relationship between racism and fear.
Save the Date: Why Democracy Without Racism Critical Perspectives Is Not Democracy. Social Analysis, Political Theory, Political Education – conference at Bielefeld University, 24–25 September 2027
Thinking.Feeling.Acting – A Festival for Planetary Justice.
The initiators and main organizers of the DFH Festival are Working Group 10 – Migration Education and Critical Race Theory – of the Faculty of Educational Science at Bielefeld University and Welthaus Bielefeld e.V.
We would like to discuss the findings of the discussion paper “Teacher Education as a Site of Fear? Racism Professionalized” with you on 20 May in Bielefeld and warmly invite you to the presentation and subsequent discussion.
On 30 March, we had the opportunity to present and discuss our discussion paper at the FAKTory bookstore in Vienna. In our presentation and the subsequent discussion, we explored the relationship between affects—using Fear as an example—and the conditions of professionalization in teacher education.
An invitation — In a conversation with Natascha Khakpour in Vienna on 30 March 2026, we will discuss how racism becomes a topic in teacher education. What traces does it leave in bodies, self-images, and the professionalization process? Together, we will explore what impulses a racism-critical perspective on professionalization in teacher education can open up. Afterwards, we invite you to bread and wine.
Are you interested in telling us about your experiences during your studies, teaching trainings, or career start? We would love to hear from you! Please leave us your contact details.
We, the GraL team, wish you a year full of hope and enriching encounters in 2026! “Same procedure as every year”? Here, we continue our tradition of looking back on the year in our research project and take a moment to reflect on key moments from 2025.
The GraL Workshop, held as a part of this year's Late Summer School “Racism Critical Research in Times of Normalization of Right-wing Positions” (December 4-6, 2025), was held under the title “Research on Racism under Conditions of Racism: An Approach to Questions of Research Ethics and Research Reflection.”
On July 19, 2025, GraL participated in the closing conference of the research project “ORAS – Organization, Racism, School,” titled “ Shapes of institutional racism and antisemitism in schools.”
From June 30 to July 5, 2025, the festival “Think.Feel.Act – A Festival of the Future for Planetary Justice” took place in Bielefeld. The festival is organized by Working Group 10 “Migration Education and Critical Race Theory” at the Faculty of Education at Bielefeld University and Welthaus Bielefeld e.V..
The GraL team wishes you a powerful new year!
2025 marks the beginning of GraL´s third project year, and this year too, will bring many milestones – both big and small - in our research process. But at this point, we would like to continue the blog post tradition we started last year and take a look back at 2024, highlighting some of the activities of the GraL team.
On July 22 and 23, the research project team participated in the workshop “Reflections in anti-racist research” together with other members of Working Group 10. The workshop was led by Prof. Annita Kalpaka and was designed to provide a space to reflect on one's own role as a researcher, to give voice to thoughts and feelings that are otherwise rarely addressed, and to offer a framework in which uncertainties and ambiguities could be discussed.
On June 5, the event “(Institutional) Racism and Critical Race Theory in Teacher Education and Schools. Perspectives and Initial Findings from the GRAL and ORAS Projects” during which the GraL and ORAS research projects presented their work and engaged in a joint discussion on issues related to education and schools from a critical perspective on racism.
Sensitivity to racism – education in a society of migration: Professor Saphira Shure in an interview with Christiane Attig and Rebecca Moltmann about her path to research and teaching, dealing with racism in schools, her dissertation, GraL, and racism research under racist structures.
What needs to be done to train prospective teachers in a way that is sensitive to racism? In an interview from the BMBF (now: BMFTR) program Humanities and Social Sciences, Prof. Saphira Shure discusses how GraL contributes to the (further) development of racism research in educational processes (teacher education).
We from the GraL team wish you a good start to the new year! We would like to conclude the year 2023 with a year-end review by the GraL doctoral researchers and a summary of the workshops and conferences we attended.
According to racism researcher Saphira Shure, structural racism has long existed in Germany; it just hasn´t been discussed. The AfD has benefited from this, says the professor of education in an interview. On July 11, 2023, in Migazin.
Structural racism has existed in Germany for a long time, but it has simply not been talked about, says Saphira Shure, professor of education at Bielefeld University. Parties such as the AfD have benefited from this, among others.
The kick-off event “Teacher Education, Schools, and Racism Research – What Brings Us Together?” in May 2023 was dedicated to exploring and connecting the differing starting points, concerns, and perspectives from the fields of research, educational practice, and education policy.
