Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient


Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient is a German research institute located in Berlin, Germany. The researchers focus on a comparative and interdisciplinary study of the Middle East, Africa, Eurasia, South and Southeast Asia. Central to its current research topics is the study of predominantly Muslim societies and their relations with non-Muslim neighbours. ZMO was founded in 1996 as an independent centre for the humanities, cultural and social sciences and is situated in the “Mittelhof”, which was designed by Hermann Muthesius, in Berlin-Nikolassee. Under the directorate of :de:Ulrike Freitag, the centre is part of the association “Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V.”. The research programme has been funded by the Berlin Senate, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the German Ministry for Education and Research. Since January 1, 2017 ZMO is part of the Leibniz Association.
The research programme of ZMO currently encompasses three interdisciplinary research units and approx. 35 scientific researchers that work on aspects of history and culture of the “modern Orient” from the 16th century onwards.

Research Program

Research Programme
ZMO's research programme, titled "Thinking through Translocal Entanglements: Perspectives from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East" , 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. This is pursued with regard to the fact that their communities are themselves shaped by specific histories of such connectivity and the tensions related to it. In terms of historical dimensions, the research is conceived against the backdrop of globalizing networks, largely from the perspective of Muslim agents and communities from the 16th to the 21st centuries. Further dimensions to be explored concern existential experiences and transformations of social practice; spatial configurations; conceptual frameworks, visions and revisions within such entanglements; economic relations; and formations and re-formations of the religious, the legal and the political.
From 2025 to 2029, the research programme focuses on the following three thematic areas: 1. State and Society, 2. Lives and Ecologies, 3. Religion and Intellectual Culture. All existing and planned projects are integrated into one of the three research areas, while the methodological and theoretical cross-sectional work takes place in cross-departmental workshops, theme days and other academic formats. This allows the empirical work on specific sources, archives, field observations and texts to be accompanied by conceptual considerations that enable researchers to participate in relevant theoretical debates. Particular attention is paid to conceptual structures and theories from the ZMO's research regions. In this way, research based at the ZMO can contribute to overcoming the Eurocentric dominance of the humanities and social sciences.
Engaging a variety of disciplines between history, anthropology, Islamic studies, political science and more, ZMO's research perspective is close to the studied translocal agents and their experience and interpretation through the profound regional knowledge and linguistic expertise of its researchers. Many of them are cultivating longer-term relationships in their regions of study, conducting research with relevant partners, or originating from the regions themselves.
Research Programme
From 2020 to 2024, ZMO's research programme comprised four interdisciplinary research fields and around 35 academic staff working on aspects of the history and culture of the ‘Modern Orient’ since the 16th century.
The programme was developed with a view to the following four thematic priorities, which formed the framework for four corresponding research units: 1. ‘Age and Generation’, 2. ‘Environment and Justice’, 3. ‘Representations of the Past as a Mobilizing Force’ and 4. ‘Contested Religion and Intellectual Culture’. 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.
Research Programme
In its main BMBF-funded research programme, the centre comprised four interdisciplinary project groups working on different historical and cultural aspects of the "Islamicate World" since the 18th century. Building on ZMO's preceding programmes, the first phase of the current programme, "Muslim Worlds – World of Islam?", tracked the global condition of Muslim life worlds in a more differentiated manner.
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. Through empirically based and conceptually engaged projects, it explores specific themes within the wider field of tension between Muslim worlds, understood as the life worlds of Muslims or members of other communities in Islamicate contexts, and the World of Islam, constructed by a religious tradition with unifying claims but diverse interpretations and practices.
The research agenda included capturing the flows and dynamics of transregional interaction and connectivity that have characterized Muslim worlds in recent historical periods and under diverse conditions – while also including the ruptures, conflicts and crises that these processes entail. This allowed to trace the tensions between global concepts and lived practices, which may emphasize very different sets of norms, and to investigate, where necessary, concrete and diverse empirical settings in their relation to overarching normative demands upon Muslims in different political, social, and economic contexts.
The second phase of ZMO’s research programme, "Muslim Worlds – World of Islam?", started from there. By way of four interlaced research units, themes and issues were explored that have emerged as relevant and particularly promising in the discussions of the previous research phase. The four fields investigated ‘Progress: Ideas, Agents, Symbols’, ‘The Politics of Resources’, ‘Trajectories of Lives and Knowledge’, and ‘Cities as Laboratories of Change’.
Research Programme 2000-2007
Under the overarching topic of “Translocality”, various projects researched in this time frame. Results of this research shed light into the network character of globalisation and its underlying limiting and excluding processes. The term “translocality” was utilised by ZMO in order to precisely explain the developments that it implies, in contrast to the term “globalisation” that is prone to theological and Eurocentric understanding.
Research Program
Under the topic “Delimitation and Appropriation During Globalisation: Asia, Africa and Europe since the 18th Century", perceptions, processes and consequences of global processes and discourses were analysed in a historical and comparative manner. Three research groups, ‘Islam and Globalisation’, ‘Actors of Change’, and ‘Locality and the State’, were put in place to organise the overarching programme.

Networking and Cooperations

The director of ZMO, Ulrike Freitag, is at the same time a professor of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Vice Director, Kai Kresse, simultaneously works as a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin in the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology. Vice director, Sonja Hegasy, simultaneously works as a visiting professor at the Barenboim-Said Academy Berlin. Teaching activities by ZMO research fellows at university faculties in Berlin, throughout Germany, and abroad contribute to a close connection between teaching and research. Partnering with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, ZMO is the only non-university research institution involved in the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies at the Freie Universität Berlin.”
ZMO is a member of the Forum Transregionale Studien at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, a research organization focused on the internationalisation of humanities and social sciences. Each year, ZMO hosts up to three scientists in the context of ‘Europe in the Middle East – the Middle East in Europe’, a research programme at the Forum. Ulrike Freitag and Nora Lafi lead the EUME research field ‘Cities Compared: Urban Change in the Mediterranean and Adjacent Regions’.
The centre has a long-standing network of scientific contacts at home and abroad, as well as a variety of formal and informal connections. It cooperates with a number of universities and non-university institutes in joint collaborative projects. A cooperation agreement exists with the Freie Universität Berlin. Apart from FU Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, ZMO's most important partners for scientific cooperation are the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, and the institutes of the Max Weber Foundation abroad. ZMO is part of the Leibniz Research Alliance “Historical Authenticity”. 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.”
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". Furthermore, ZMO participated in following collaborating projects:
  • Crossroads Asia, Partner: Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, Institut für Orient- und Asienwissenschaften, Zentralasien-Seminar, Centre for Development Studies
  • Phantomgrenzen in Ostmitteleuropa, Partner: Centre Marc Bloch, HU Berlin, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
  • Urban Violence in the Middle East, Partner: School of Oriental and African Studies
  • Participation in the Sonderforschungsbereich 640 HU Berlin
  • Humanities in the European Research Area, Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonial, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War
  • DFG-long term cooperation Das Moderne Indien in Deutschen Archiven, 1706 – 1989 .
  • Spaces of Participation: Topographies of Social and Political Chance in Morocco, Egypt, and Palestine.
  • Religion, Moral und Boko in Westafrika: Studentische Laufbahnen fuer ein gutes Leben, Partner: Universite Abdou Moumouni, Niamey in Niger und der University of Ibadan in Nigeria