Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

ZMO was founded in 1996 as an independent centre for the humanities, cultural and social sciences and is situated in the “Mittelhof”,[1] which was designed by Hermann Muthesius, in Berlin-Nikolassee.

35 scientific researchers that work on aspects of history and culture of the “modern Orient” from the 16th century onwards.Research Program (2020-2024) ZMO's research programme, titled "Thinking through Translocal Entanglements: Perspectives from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East" (2020-2024), explores and analyses the ways in which social actors address and negotiate tensions and challenges related to diverse aspects of translocal connectivity in their experience, perception and practice.

In terms of historical dimensions, the research is conceived against the backdrop of globalizing networks, largely from the perspective of Muslim agents and communities (and their respective counterparts) from the 16th to the 21st centuries.

Further dimensions to be explored concern existential experiences and transformations of social practice; spatial (re-) configurations; conceptual frameworks, visions and revisions within such entanglements; economic relations; and formations and re-formations of the religious, the legal and the political.

[10] Hereby, the empirical work on specific materials, archives, fieldwork observations and texts is accompanied by conceptual reflections, contributing to relevant theoretical debates.

In particular, attention to conceptual frameworks and theories from ZMO's regions of study plays an important role, as ZMO-based research also seeks to contribute to an overcoming of the dominance of Eurocentrism in the humanities and social sciences.

From such a perspective, which understands itself as part of an on-going critique of Eurocentrism, the research programme studied Conceptions, Practices and Crises of the Global in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The four fields investigated ‘Progress: Ideas, Agents, Symbols’, ‘The Politics of Resources’, ‘Trajectories of Lives and Knowledge’, and ‘Cities as Laboratories of Change’.

Vice Director, Kai Kresse, simultaneously works as a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin in the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology.

Ulrike Freitag and Nora Lafi lead the EUME research field ‘Cities Compared: Urban Change in the Mediterranean and Adjacent Regions’.

Cooperation agreements also exist with the University of Dohuk in Iraq, the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia, the Institut Francais de Recherche en Afrique in Ibadan, Nigeria, and the Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche sur la Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local in Niamey, Niger, and the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.”[13] In 2012, an international cooperation began with the Beirut Archive Umam Documentation & Research for the Project "Transforming Memories: Cultural Production and Personal/Public Memory in Lebanon and Morocco" (2012-2014).

The series provides a platform for authors to present and discuss innovative contributions to current theoretical and comparative debates in relation to ZMO's programmatic research agenda.

Additionally, individual events regarding current scientific and political topics are organised, partly in collaboration with national or international organizations.

[27] Apart from this regular stock, further valuable sources and rare books are contained in the deposit library section of the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic, and in the estates of Fritz and Gertraud Steppat, African historian Jürgen Herzog, Middle East historian Gerhard Höpp, and Indologist Horst Krüger, all of which were donated to the centre.

It supports ZMO intrinsically and materially, for example through consultation, mediating contacts, financing events, and offering scholarships for young researchers.

Vice director is PD Dr. Katrin Bromber, scholar of African Studies and head of the research unit “Age and Generation” of ZMO.