Past events
- 2026-07-02T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-07-02T14:30:00+02:00
2
ThursdayZEF public lecture: Advancing Urban Climate Change Adaptation
Cities are at the frontline of escalating climate change impacts, particularly in regions where rising natural hazards intersect with growing socio-economic vulnerability. Cities in such settings hence face an urgent need to engage in profound adaptation efforts. But where do cities stand in planning and implementing adaptation? Which solutions work in formal and informal settings? And how can the deep and transformative changes that are often needed in cities be negotiated and governed across different actors? The talk will address these questions by combining global evidence synthesis with lessons from in-depth case studies, particularly from Asia and Africa. It will draw recommendations for policy and action and identify research needs for the future.
- 2026-06-25T15:00:00+02:00
- 2026-06-25T16:00:00+02:00
25
ThursdayZEF/CSG Expert Talk: The implications of complexity
Join us for this open session as we discuss "The Implications of Complexity" and explore how self-organization, AI, and systems science are reshaping healthcare, transportation, and governance.
- 2026-06-24T11:00:00+02:00
- 2026-06-24T12:00:00+02:00
24
WednesdayZEF CPC Colloquium: Tensions among Farmers in Benin
Locally-led Adaptation views community-based organizations as a key delivery mechanism for redressing climate injustice by shifting power over climate adaptation to local people. This research examines how farmer groups act as formations for collective adaptation while simultaneously reproducing social hierarchies. The research adopts a political ecology lens which reveals that self-organisation through bonding practices, such as peer learning, information sharing and resource pooling in farmer groups, emerges in response to compounding climate and non-climate stresses in market gardening. However, groups are embedded within a multi-scalar governance network where local outcomes are conditioned by national and international programming and finance frameworks for climate adaptation. Externally driven conditionalities attached to accessing adaptation resources produce local tensions that enable elite capture and membership regulations which exclude some farmers from adaptation benefits.
- 2026-06-19T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-19T14:30:00+02:00
19
FridayPublic lecture: An Island for Two
Rather than a dividing line, the border functions as a zone where people from both sides of Haiti and the Dominican Republic live as close neighbors with deep relationships, creating an island isolated between two countries. This presentation explores the "An Island for Two," concept, where the border exists like an island placed inside another island. Within this space, Haitians and Dominicans share unique proximity and a specific spatial solidarity. It is a cultural and social island, a gateway where the border experiences dialectics, rupture, and suture. Ultimately, it represents the revenge of geography over history: what history divided, geography has united. Jean-Marie Théodat's work focuses on borders, identity, and the intertwined histories of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He is the author of influential works and has contributed widely to debates on postcolonialism, debt, and urban life in Haiti.
- 2026-06-18T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-18T14:30:00+02:00
18
ThursdayZEF public lecture. Ruptures: What are we now?
The world is more and more fractured and disconnected, despite the technology that was designed to connect us. What is the nature of rupture, both individual and collective? The Caribbean is, perhaps, the place on earth where rupture has been most thoroughly metabolised into language through its literatures, made into something that can be passed on. How might it serve as a model for rupture and repair in the future?
- 2026-06-11T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-11T15:00:00+02:00
11
ThursdayThe Kara Ritual of the Konso
This talk is part of the Heritage Week of the Bonn. More info here: https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/research-and-teaching/research-profile/transdisciplinary-research-areas/tra5/heritage-week-2026
- 2026-06-10T11:00:00+02:00
- 2026-06-10T12:00:00+02:00
10
WednesdayZEF Colloquium: Becoming river
Water is at the center of the struggle for life. Modern civilization's dependence on capitalist formations has led to the destruction of ecosystems and water-bodies as sacred entities. Rivers and mudflats, as complex hybrid networks, reveal ways of living amid a planetary crisis and can offer creative socio-ecological care practices. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in Latin America and the Caribbean, Denisse Roca-Servat, proposes to think with water as a point of departure for envisioning alternatives to the extractive-capitalist model. Becoming river, therefore, implies considering geo-hydro-social diversity, its historical foundations, its multi-scalar assemblages, and ultimately, committing to build alternative hydrosocial relations, intersecting decolonial, feminist, and cosmopolitical justice approaches.
- 2026-06-03T16:30:00+02:00
- 2026-06-03T18:00:00+02:00
3
WednesdayZEF public lecture on The transformation of agrifood traders
The talk presents a panorama of surprising and rapid changes in the trader segment in domestic agrifood value chains in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a crucial component of transformation of value chains from traditional to transitional and early modern phases, as traders are major “change agents” in food systems. Many of the patterns observed in detailed trader surveys are at odds with conventional wisdom regarding the role of middlemen, vertical integration, outsourcing of agricultural services, etc. Observed patterns, their drivers, and emerging evidence on effects are discussed. About the speaker: Tom Reardon is one of the most cited agricultural economists worldwide. He is a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI. Tom is Fellow of the AAEA and Honorary Life Member of the IAAE. He resided over 20 years in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and spent more than 40 years studying those regions.
- 2026-05-28T16:00:00+02:00
- 2026-05-28T17:00:00+02:00
28
ThursdayINTERFACES colloquium: sustainable land management in Africa
Multiple actors, multiple strategies: how to incentivize the uptake of sustainable land management practices by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
- 2026-05-21T13:30:00+02:00
- 2026-05-21T14:30:00+02:00
21
ThursdayZEF public lecture about Biofortified Seeds in Zimbabwe
Individuals do not always make decisions according to traditional economic rationality; instead, behavioral factors such as perceptions, information, and aspirations shape how they value and adopt new technologies. We present 3 examples of how these factors influence farmer acceptance and valuation of agricultural-nutrition interventions, specifically iron- and zinc-biofortified beans and vitamin A biofortified maize seeds in Zimbabwe. First, we examine how experimental quantity design affects farmers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for biofortified bean seeds. Second, we evaluate how nutrition information and farmer aspirations influence demand for biofortified bean seeds. Finally, we examine how different types and combinations of information—including labeling, vitamin A deficiency and its health impacts, the nutritional benefits of vitamin A-biofortified maize, and cooking-quality attributes such as taste and cooking time—influence farmers’ WTP for vitamin A biofortified maize seed.