Ester Nergis Canefe

Q1. Who are you?  

I am a Middle Eastern Canadian scholar of public international law, forced migration studies and political theory pertaining to violence, trauma and dispossession. I am also an established mural painter and visual artist. 

Q2. What was your motivation for applying for the FFVT fellowship? Why Germany? 

I wanted to work with the FFVT and IMIS group of scholars, specifically focusing on the Global East. 

Q3. What do you expect from the fellowship? 

I expect to write, exchange ideas, present projects I am working on, meet scholars and network for future projects. 

Q4. What is the focus of your work, and what is innovative about it? / What are your planned outcomes and activities for the fellowship period? And how do they relate to your FFVT hosting institution/ the FFVT cooperation project? 

I plan to finish three articles while a fellow. The first one is an examination of deportations and statelessness under the Soviet regime. I have already completed the archival work in Budapest, Hungary at the Open Society Archives. The second one is a methodology piece underlining the importance of utilising post-colonial/decolonial approaches to forced migration flows from Eastern Europe. And the third article is a completion of a short manifesto on Ethics of Witnessing, which I have been working on for two years, in collaboration with colleagues at IMIS. My work is transdisciplinary, comparative and heavily guided by applied political philosophy and critical legal theory.