Academy in Exile

ABOUT

Academy in Exile (AiE) supports cultural producers and scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and law who are at risk because of their academic work and/or their civic engagement in human rights, democracy, and pursuit of academic freedom. AiE provides a forum for reflecting on the pressing challenges to intellectual life, critical thinking, reason, social and environmental justice, and diversity that face the world today and that define the parameters of academic freedom. AiE fellowships afford scholars the opportunity to continue their careers in Germany and to work on a research project of their own choosing in a multidisciplinary environment. Fellows contribute to and help shape the research agenda and intellectual profile of AiE generally.

HISTORY

Academy in Exile was founded in 2017 as a joint initiative of the Institute for Turkish Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen and the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin. The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Volkswagen Foundation provided start-up funding. From 2019 to 2023, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Open Society Foundations, AiE also hosted scholars at the Freie Universität Berlin, as part of Academy in Exile’s Critical Thinking Residency Program, which gathered scholars into a cohort around the theme of critical thinking. Funding from the Mellon Foundation, Volkswagen Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Freudenberg Foundation, IIE-Scholar Rescue Fund, Scholars at Risk Network, Allianz Foundation, and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has allowed AiE to support scholars, artists, and journalists through fellowships and positions, and to further its research, cultural activities, and outreach.

FELLOWSHIPS

Academy in Exile is based on a model that creates multidisciplinary cohorts of scholars around a unified theme, with the aim of enabling persecuted scholars to collaborate with one another. Since its inception in 2017, AiE has created 86 hosting arrangements through long-term fellowships, emergency stipends, artist-in-residence fellowships, and guest professorships. Unlike many other initiatives that support displaced scholars, AiE fellows are resident in the area; they meet regularly for colloquia, conferences, workshops, professional development, and other scholarly and cultural activities, and receive intensive support from the AiE team and university community. A number of AiE fellows are hosted each year by the KWI in Essen. In 2025, 19 fellows from nine different countries were offered fellowships by AiE. 

COOPERATION

In 2025, Academy in Exile established a cooperation with the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan to enable an AiE scholar to be hosted in Ann Arbor.

ONLINE COURSES

Since 2019, online courses developed by Academy in Exile as part of its Tandem Teaching Program have been co-developed by scholars barred from academic life in their home countries. Across borders and disciplines, scholars collaborate to shape widely accessible, pioneering pedagogical tools for higher education. Course videos can be accessed through AiE’s YouTube channel. A new course, Afghanistan and the Arts, will be launched in 2025.

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS

Academy in Exile creates scholarly fora for the dissemination of its intellectual work. An inaugural international conference was held on October 18–19, 2018 at the KWI in Essen on the topic of Exile and Academic Freedom Today. The conference helped identify gaps in existing support mechanisms for exiled scholars, and proposed new models of support such as the one provided by AiE. AiE hosted a second international conference on Critical Thinking on January 16–17, 2020 at Freie Universität Berlin. AiE’s third international conference on The Unrecognized Genocide: Dersim 1937–1938 took place on November 18–20, 2021, making a scholarly intervention in an under-researched topic. On December 8–9, 2022, AiE organized a closed workshop, Philosophical Steamboat 1922–2022: On the Centenary of the Exile of Intellectuals, at KWI that brought together scholars from Russia and Ukraine. More recent conferences and workshops include the Expert Stakeholders’ Workshop during the annual DWIH conference FUTURE FORUM in New York City on October 20, 2023 to strategize around support for displaced scholars, and the Conference on Critical Engagement with the History of Sinti and Roma on November 9, 2023, the first such conference of its kind. A workshop entitled Shared Histories: Gallipoli, Australia, and the Armenian Genocide brought together international scholars working in history, museum studies, memory and commemoration, and genocide studies. It was co-organized with the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre, History Co-Lab, and School of History, and held on September 3–4, 2024. Afghans in Exile: Identities and Solidarity, January 24–25, 2025, marks the culmination of AiE’s Mellon Foundation and Volkswagen Foundation–funded AiE Afghanistan Program, which has supported 10 Afghan scholars.

PUBLICATIONS

Academy in Exile launched a series with transcript Verlag to publish monographs and edited volumes on academic freedom, authoritarianism, exile, and related topics. The first volume in the series, Refugee Routes: Telling, Looking, Protesting, Redressing (2020) is edited by Vanessa Agnew, Kader Konuk, and Jane O. Newman (University of California Irvine). A second volume, Academics in Exile: Networks, Knowledge Exchange, and New Forms of Internationalization, edited by Vera Axyonova (Universität Wien), Florian Kohstall (Freie Universität Berlin), and Carola Richter (Freie Universität Berlin) was published in June 2022. The third volume, What We Brought with Us: Things of Exile and Migration, edited by Vanessa Agnew, appeared in 2024.

Academy in Exile’s short-form imprint Ostrakon publishes multi- and interdisciplinary work that explores themes broadly related to mass mobility, forced migration, and exile arising from conflict, authoritarianism, and climate change. Ostrakon welcomes contributions that move beyond conventional scholarly presentational forms to alternative modes of creative and multimedia work. The most recent issue of Ostrakon is a special issue on academic freedom and scholars at risk.

EXHIBITIONS

Academy in Exile curates and hosts exhibitions on topics related to forced migration and exile. To date, Academy in Exile-supported exhibitions have been shown in Dortmund, Essen, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Marbach, New York City, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Canberra, and online. Exhibitions are developed by AiE members, including participants in its Artist-in-Residence Program.

TRANSATLANTIC WORKING GROUP FOR AT-RISK SCHOLARS

Co-organized by Academy in Exile and University Alliance Ruhr, the Transatlantic Working Group for At-Risk Scholars convenes an annual meeting to discuss cooperation between institutions on both sides of the Atlantic to strategize around support for displaced scholars. Meetings discussing best practices have been held in New York City (2023) and Berkeley (2024). The next meeting will be held in conjunction with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes meeting in Berlin in June 2025. 

GARDEN(S) OF REFUGE

With funding from the Mellon Foundation, Allianz Foundation, and Rudolf Chaudoire-Stiftung, and support from TU Dortmund University, Academy in Exile—together with the Smart Urban Areas Project in the Spatial Planning Department at TU Dortmund University and UA Ruhr partners—has initiated a Garden(s) of Refuge project to plant a micro-forest on the TU Dortmund University campus. With input from faculty, students, staff, AiE fellows, and members of the public, the project draws attention to the interconnections between climate change and forced migration. An associated cultural and educational program will be supplemented by research projects that monitor the garden. A partner garden at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio fosters collaboration and internationalization with one of TU Dortmund University’s strategic partners.

TRANSNATIONAL LITERARY ARCHIVE

Academy in Exile maintains a Transnational Literary Archive, begun in 2018 by Kader Konuk at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Turkish Department. The Archive is the first archive of its kind in Germany. It has the aim of collecting transnational literature produced in Germany and provides a framework for conducting research into Germany’s multicultural heritage.