Extreme Experiences in War Zones – An Eyewitness Report
18. June 2008
Konstanz, 18. 6. 2008: The lecture series “Crises and Intervention – or Crisis of Interventionism?” will continue with a lecture by Dr. Arne Perras, the Süddeutschen Zeitung’s correspondent for Africa, at the University of Konstanz on Thursday 19 June at 4.15 pm. In a lecture titled “Extreme Experiences in War Zones – An Eyewitness Report” Perras, an historian and journalist, will speak on the violence that has marked recent African history. Members of the public are warmly invited to attend the lecture, which will be held in auditorium R 611 at the University of Konstanz.
Perras is one of the few German journalists to regularly report from the African continent and one of the most knowledgeable European journalists on African politics and history. His recent feature for the Süddeutschen Zeitung “South Africa: Protocol of an Atrocity. Ernesto’s Fatal Mistake” (Südafrika: Das Protokoll einer Menschenverbrennung. Ernestos tödlicher Irrtum) is a chilling account of the wave of violence against migrants from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi that rocked South Africa in May of this year.
In his lecture Perras will also outline his analysis of the violent domestic conflicts in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why are these and other African nations so often rocked by outbreaks of violence and mass crimes? How do journalists carry out their work in these conditions? The lecture is an attempt to answer these questions.
About the speaker: Arne Perras is a journalist, historian and graduate of Oxford University. His dissertation from 2004 - “Carl Peters and German Imperialism 1856–1918. A Political Biography” - is an exemplary study of the career of a German “Colonial Pioneer” in German- East Africa. Perras has also reported from Tansania, Indonesia and the Balkan countries. Before joining the international department of the Süddeutschen Zeitung in 2000, Perras was a corresponent for politics and parliamentary reporting for the Nürnberger Nachrichten. He has worked from the Süddeutschen Zeitung office in Kampala (Uganda) since 2006.
Top diplomats, politicians, government representatives and journalists will present their views on humanitarian crises, interventions and the role of international unity and its organizations in lecture series at the University of Konstanz from 10 June through to 14 July 2008. The series, titled “Crises and Intervention – or Crisis of Interventionism?”, is organized by the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” in co-operation with the Department of Politics and Management at the University of Konstanz (in particular the MA program in Public Administration and Conflict Management).
For more information see: http://www.exc16.de/cms/interventionism.html.