Lecture by Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Longue Durée Négritude: Thinking the Movement Beyond the Twentieth Century

This talk examines the form of Negritude that has come to shape our scholarly and popular understanding – one shaped by the intellectual and creative contributions of Paulette Nardal and Aimé Césaire of Martinique, Léon‑Gontran Damas of Guyane, and Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal. I first situate Negritude within its layered contexts: the local landscapes of Martinique, Guyane, and Senegal; the national framework of France and its colonial institutions; and the wider global currents of Black internationalism circulating in the interwar and postwar periods. Through these intertwined settings, I explore the movement’s defining traits and its philosophical, political, artistic, and literary expressions as articulated by the thinkers and poets who shaped it.

16 June 2026, 3 p.m. (CEST)
GloPhi Center & Livestream

Book Presentation and Art Exhibition on the Cucapáh Indigenous Group

The River, Self-Determination and Indigenous Peoples

Fernando Márquez Duarte will present the three books he has published regarding the Cucapáh Indigenous group: Awí Uyáj Cucapáh: El saber Cucapáh (2023), Manual de la Lengua Cucapáh (2024), Sociolingüística Cucapáh (2025), and discuss them with Diego Rosales and Raymundo Medina. These books are the result of over three years of ethnographic field work with the Cucapáh in the communities of El Mayor Cucapáh, Ejido Cucapáh Mestizo and Ejido El Indiviso in Baja California, Mexico. Additionally, a series of art pieces, created by Fernando through techniques like embossing, printmaking and wood carving, will be exhibited.

11 June 2026, 3 p.m. (CEST)
On-Site & Livestream

Lecture by Priyanka Jha

Silence, Exclusion, and Recovery: Feminist Philosophy in Modern India

The lecture focuses on late 19th- and early 20th-century Colonial India and also recovers the long tradition of Feminist Philosophy in ancient India by examining its nature, sites, and modes of dissemination. Specifically, the study explains orality through the Bhakti tradition of the 8th Century, showing how it shapes modern feminist philosophical thought in India. The lecture challenges the erasure of this tradition by tracing the politics of Canon and showing how the frames of conventional philosophy are used to marginalise alternative perspectives. Women philosophers are often labelled as social reformers, writers, or culturalists instead of as philosophers. This lecture argues for recognition of embodiment and experiential knowledge as core to Indian Women’s Philosophy, adding to the larger global feminist philosophical quest of an inclusive canon.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026 | 6-8 p.m. | HC.N.0.09 & Livestream
Center for Gender Studies, Hildesheim University

Lecture Series 2026 | Tuesdays 2 p.m. (CEST)

Transatlantic Resonances: Philosophical Entanglements between Africa and the Americas

By connecting historical events with current challenges and debates, the series opens a space for reflection on the possibilities and limitations of philosophy as inclusive, intercontinental or global knowledge production. In this way, it reveals both the interconnections and the tensions that continue to shape philosophy as an intercultural project between Africa and the Americas to this day. Here, philosophical knowledge production has relied not only on written records but also on rich oral traditions, whose documentation poses a particular challenge for the history of philosophy. Next to intellectual connections across the Atlantic in movements such as Négritude, decoloniality or feminism, the lecture series sheds light on the joint challenge of dealing with oral archives and Indigenous philosophies, including Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir) and Ubuntu.

10–14 August 2026
University of Hildesheim

Practices of Epoché

At its origin, phenomenology was as much a praxis as a philosophy: a chain of conscious acts that promised to reorient our relation to things, others, nature, the world, and ourselves. More than a century later, we can ask: does the phenomenologist still practice the epoché? Is phenomenology today merely the name of a historical-philosophical tradition or is it a living method capable of adapting to the exigencies of a changing world? This philosophical summer academy, conceived as a phenomenological retreat, places the phenomenological method itself, not its accumulated doctrine, at the centre. It proposes an environment in which the epoché is explored, exercised, and interrogated in its practical, experiential, and intercultural dimensions.

A Phenomenological Retreat

International Summer School
August 24–28, 2026

Healing as a
Philosophical Practice

This summer school investigates healing as a philosophical practice from interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives. We will examine how philosophical traditions across societies, generations, and historical contexts have conceptualized and facilitated healing, particularly at the communal level. Human vulnerability manifests in diverse forms of suffering—physical, emotional, mental, epistemic, political, and relational. Throughout history and across cultures, individuals and communities have turned to a variety of philosophical, spiritual, and relational practices to address collective wounds, restore interpersonal balance, and rebuild fractured communities. These practices seek to contribute to the regeneration of social bonds and the reconfiguration of epistemic and ethical frameworks after periods of rupture and conflict.

Organized by Abosede Ipadeola
April 30, 2026, Hildesheim University & Online

Yorùbá Philosophy: Critical Perspectives on Indigenous Concepts and Phenomena

This colloquium will bring together leading experts from linguistics, history, philosophy, and peace studies to engage with Yoruba philosophy from diverse perspectives.

The participants will critically examine Yoruba culture, traditions, religious beliefs, ethical systems, epistemological frameworks, metaphysical concepts, political ideas, and other aspects of Yoruba intellectual heritage. Through these discussions, the colloquium aims to highlight the vibrancy and relevance of Yoruba as a language that contains sophisticated philosophical thought. The one-day colloquium will be in two parts. Each session comprises four speakers, who will explore in detail the fundamentals and important issues in Yoruba philosophy from an interdisciplinary perspective.

International Conference
October 5 – 6, 2026

Korean Philosophy Conference

The North American Korean Philosophy Association (NAKPA) is holding its 11th Annual conference at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, on October 5–6, 2026. This year we are pleased to announce that the conference will be hosted by the Center for Advanced Studies “Philosophizing in a Globalized World” at the University of Hildesheim under the auspices of Prof. Sool Park.

The annual conference for this year will be devoted to: “Korean Philosophy: From a Comparative and Intercultural Perspective.” In view of the emerging importance of Non-Western philosophy, we accept papers that focus on philosophical topics related to comparative Korean/Asian/Non-Western philosophy as well as intercultural philosophy.

From a Comparative and Intercultural Perspective

Research Focus 2025/26

Philosophies
in Africa

The academic discipline of philosophy is still defined by a Eurocentric framework that excludes philosophical traditions and actors from vast regions of the globe, not least among these the rich and diverse traditions of African philosophy. Consequently, African philosophers rarely appear in teaching curricula or as speakers in European and North American academic settings. Their current omission from mainstream discourses and teaching materials cannot only be ascribed to unfamiliarity or ignorance of their ideas; it reflects a long-standing historical devaluation and marginalization of African philosophy from a long list of European thinkers who, like Hegel, explicitly rejected African philosophy as part of a global historiography of philosophy.

Database Initiative
Coordinated by Leon Krings

Hildesheim Encyclopedia
of Philosophical Sources (HePS)

As part of the ongoing efforts of our Center to explore global intellectual histories and philosophies beyond established Eurocentric canons, the Database Initiative aims to build an open-access digital infrastructure for the documentation, interconnection, and visualization of philosophical sources and traditions from around the world. The initiative operates from 2025 to 2028 as a core sub-project of the Center and brings together an interdisciplinary team of philosophers, digital humanists, and data scientists. Its central goal is to create the Hildesheim Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sources (HePS) — a dynamic knowledge graph that models and contextualizes sources of philosophizing across cultures, languages, and historical periods.

Namita Herzl (ed.)

Women Beyond The Canon:

With contributions by Tiesha Cassel, Shay Welch, Khimaja R. Connell, Abosede Priscilla Ipadeola, Martina Kopf, Margaret A. McLaren, Priyanka Jha, Kanchana Mahadevan, Un-sunn Lee, and Yoko Arisaka.

In the rich field of the histories of philosophy, certain voices have been elevated to prominence while others have lingered in the margins, awaiting their moment to be heard. The volume Women Beyond the Canon: Philosophies and Feminisms seeks to give expression to these voices and to unravel the threads of traditional narratives, weaving together perspectives that have long been relegated to the periphery of philosophical discourse.

Philosophies and Feminisms

Rolf Elberfeld and Anke Graness (eds.)

Orders of Knowledge in Philosophy: Critical Assessments

Philosophy is only just beginning—later than other humanities disciplines—to face the challenges of an increasingly globalized world and the associated and inescapable but difficult task of decolonization. For it is not only the exclusion of philosophical traditions from other regions of the world or the exclusion of women—both from the history of philosophy as well as the mainstream philosophical debates of the present—that is under criticism, but more fundamentally the claims to truth and universal validity associated with philosophical theories.