Just saw an amazing production of Travelers by renowned Hungarian director Árpád Schilling performed by the Lithuanian State Youth Theatre, with an appeal for the protection of culture from a minister with alleged pro-Kremlin ties. If you can catch this anywhere, seriously do yourself the favour

Restricting women’s procreative and bodily sovereignty and overall access to abortion will sure have those effects. As @marta-zboralska.bsky.social writes in a comment on the plummeting birth and population rates in Poland👇 indeed, how many women have emigrated… www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Seen a lot of alarming statistics on intersecting gender and racial injustices in medicine, and this is by far one of the worst. Our health care and political systems need to stop trivialising the impact of racialization and systemically counter patterns of harm www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Heading to Berlin Science Week? Join our discussion Bodies in Systems: Algorithmic Promises of Cure. I'll talk about how the continuities of gender and racial injustice in medicine and research get magnified by digitization and the remedies that are warranted berlinscienceweek.com/programme/bo...

On de/coloniality on the left: the left strives for an ideal to look up to, yet, via its common emotionally charged identification with the USSR, many of its segments continue to perpetuate empire and genocide denial and the silencing of whole populations, who have resisted and survived oppression

A webinar on destalinization as decolonization: what does it mean to recognise the Soviet ‘Union’ and post-Soviet Russia as a colonial project and why is it essential to confront and overcome an ongoing imperial and not only an authoritarian legacy Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Must read. Basically, if you’ve fallen for Ru propaganda, the chatbots will dig you in even deeper. Also note this: “Grok provided the highest number of Russian sources even when asked neutral questions, the research found.” Higher than the Chinese chatbot!

This training school will be of interest to our RUTA research communities, in light of the intensifying global anti-gender mobilisations, that have been also affecting the RUTA region(s)

According to the police, around 10,000 people took to the streets of Riga tonight to protest against the (so far unsuccessful) attempts to withdraw Latvia from the Istanbul Convention.

Senior German officials have accused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party of deliberately abusing parliamentary powers to collect and likely pass secret information about the country's military capabilities and the state of critical infrastructure to Russia. Source: Der Spiegel

Here comes the PSA! With @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social we'll talk about the invisibility of East-European migrants in German health data. We've published on how the lack of data on racialisation maintains white ignorance about racism and next we'll look at the Western dimensions of white ignorance

“Despite public condemnation after the defeat of Nazism… eugenic ideas have persisted into the twenty-first century in different shapes and forms, with state and professional support”

Germany, your leader is an extremist. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Orbán is learning the hard way

Such great mobilisation of the Latvian civil society, so very glad to see this result. And yes, the conservative to far right synergies are ongoing and rather well synchronised, and our critical masses will need to keep organising more and more effectively, collectively, transregionally and globally

On the ab/use of data voids

@seyeabimbola.bsky.social‘s work majorly inspires the next gathering of the RUTA Association for Central, South-Eastern, and Eastern European, Baltic, Caucasus, Central and Northern Asian Studies in Global Conversation, scrutinising gaze beyond the global North/South binary bsky.app/profile/asso...

This is a wonderful interview. Norito Kunisue traveled all the way from Japan to join us in Ukraine this summer for our RUTA conference on imagination, and amid the many conversations we’ve had was this one with Botakoz Kassymbekova on why it was so important to found RUTA and what we are aiming for

Here comes the PSA! With @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social we'll talk about the invisibility of East-European migrants in German health data. We've published on how the lack of data on racialisation maintains white ignorance about racism and next we'll look at the Western dimensions of white ignorance

Eagerly waiting for this theatre play

Amazing. More power to the protests

So good to see!

This monumental work is out: 63 chapters! Incredible editing by Nina Lykke, Tara Mehrabi and Marietta Radomska. Honoured to have our chapter here with Magdalena Górska & Ewa Majewska on Metamorphic Necropolitics: Deadly Othering in European East–West Power Relations www.routledge.com/Routledge-In...

On the power and injustice of the foreign gaze: “But it is also about power – the kind that distances people. That foreign audience might be a powerful policymaker, a set of academics, or a philanthropist. The question is always: who is looking, from where, and what gets distorted in the process?”

A recording of our RUTA 2025 featured panel on Romani Visions for the Future, that I was entrusted with moderating. As Elżbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz had to postpone, Tetiana Storozhko joined us in Ukraine for this immensely crucial discussion, alongside Zola Kondur, Volodymyr Yakovenko and Stephan Müller

Discussions with Yanush Panchenko are always enlightening. Last year I had the honour to attend a panel with him and Romani defenders and learn more about Romani resistance against Russian occupation. Highly recommending this online debate organised by the European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine

Keep sending us abstracts for the next conference of the RUTA Association for Central, South-Eastern, and Eastern European, Baltic, Caucasus, Central and Northern Asian Studies in Global Conversation, exploring the role of rooted knowledges as catalysts of change and shifts in power Deadline Nov 15

And now this. The synergies of anti-gender, anti-LGBTQ+, far right and imperial mobilisation are intensifying

We are about to start! Join us for a RUTA conversation about our approaches to understanding family history, its personal and collective significance, and how we can translate these stories into our contemporary lives and practices in the context of multiple crises. See the registration link below

Powerful metaphor on white phosphorus, fascism and Russian propaganda “When a phosphorus bomb explodes, it leaves in the sky countless tiny, tailed sparks - it looks like fireworks. It is mesmerizing. This image & its emotional effect perfectly captures the essence of what fascism is… 1/2

Another contribution to the ‘when will it end series’, this time from anarchists from Belarus “In their minds, we are still the same barbarians… and the only way out is to exclude those very barbarians and ensure the triumph of Western thought at events such as the anarchist book fair in Berlin”

"There are still far-right currents that hold traditional anti-Slavic views, as the Nazis once did.” That is very true, but, concerningly, it’s a much wider problem in a society that wasn’t denazified in regard to anti-Slavic racism, and that concerns the full political spectrum, including the left

“Historically, anti-Istanbul Convention disinformation has been one of the tools in Russia’s propaganda arsenal” Gender studies scholars & social justice advocates across Europe’s East have been raising alarms about the synergies of anti-gender, fascist and imperial mobilisation for a long time now

"The vast majority involved in Nazi atrocities received only minimal if any punishment and many continued to pursue their careers without interruption, according to the commissioned studies." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

The idea of spending more time at the Bodleian Libraries sounds tempting

A reminder about tomorrow’s RUTA webinar, that will explore our approaches to understanding family history, its personal and collective significance, and how we can translate these stories into our contemporary lives and practices in the context of multiple crises. See the registration link below

"UN refugee agency official Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said that the new arrivals told stories of widespread ethnic and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities shot dead because they were unable to flee" this keeps getting worse www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...

@who.int is appalled & shocked by reports of the killing of 460+ patients & companions at Saudi Maternity 🏥 in El Fasher, #Sudan Attacks on health MUST STOP immediately & unconditionally All patients, health personnel & facilities must be protected under International Humanitarian Law Ceasefire!

Looking forward to this hybrid panel on the rise of the Far Right & how academia has become both target & accomplice in the global shift towards authoritarianism: Academic Freedom Under Attack: A Transatlantic Conversation Nov 5, 12 ET/5pm Berlin time Register @ bit.ly/rsvp5nov

I'm grateful to The Guardian for publishing my short response: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

RUTA stands in solidarity with the Latvian civil society, that is raising alarms and protesting against the concerning rise of global anti-gender and authoritarian politics fuelled by Russia's propaganda narratives

Meanwhile in Germany

Look at Orbán, doing the old divide and conquer strategy for Russia. This is exactly how Soviet and German imperialism operated when proceeding to occupy Europe’s East: turning populations against each other for conquest. We have seen this before, let’s resist the capture again And on that note…

This is a very insightful read about Jewish anti-Nazi resistance. Also on how science and epidemiology can be “hacked” in the struggle against genocidal imperial violence and those who choose to perpetrate it

Support Philip Obaji’s crucial journalism if you can. His work has been key in uncovering Russian paramilitary crimes and extractivism across Africa

#Sudan: We are deeply concerned about the situation in El Fasher. As fighting intensifies, thousands are trapped with no safe way out. The Rapid Support Forces have announced that they have taken control of the city.

A recently published book that will be of interest to our RUTA communities

A reminder about our next RUTA webinar: we will hear from independent researcher and writer from Qazaqstan Elmira Kakabayeva, multi-disciplinary artist from Kyrgyzstan now living and working in New York Aida Sulova, and Berlin-based artist of Kalmyk heritage Victoria Sarangova Link to registration👇

Keep sending us abstracts for our next RUTA conference in Ukraine. We will explore, how the production of knowledge and cultural heritage differs when it is rooted in the places and communities it speaks to, and which possibilities and shifts in power this enables. Deadline for submissions: Nov 15

Much appreciation for how Toni Morrison’s thought is gradually being carried into global health fields, here by Natalie Tegama “I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. I claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was”