Berlin is increasingly emerging as a hub of Arab intellectual life in Europe. In this first study of Arab culture to zoom in on the thriving metropolis, the contributors shed light on the dynamics of transformation with Arabs as agents, subjects, and objects of change in the spheres of politics, society and history, gender, demographics and migration, media and culture, and education and research. The kaleidoscopic character of the collection, embracing academic articles, essays, interviews and photos, reflects critical encounters in Berlin. It brings together authors from inter- and multidisciplinary fields and backgrounds and invites the readers into a much-needed conversation on contemporary transformations.

Hanan Badr is Professor and Chair for Public Spheres and Inequalities at the Department of Communication, University of Salzburg, Austria. Her work focuses on the interactions between journalism, media, power, and transformation processes, focusing on digitization and globalization. She held positions at Freie Universität Berlin, Cairo University, Gulf University for Sciences and Technology, and Orient-Institut Beirut/Max Weber Foundation. Her work has been published in Digital Journalism, International Communication Gazette, Media and Communication, and Media, War & Conflict. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication. She serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, and the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Her awards include the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and the DAAD Scholarship Award. She is elected Chair for Activism, Communication and Social Change at the International Communication Association.
Nahed Samour (Dr.)is a postdoctoral researcher and Core Emerging Investigator at the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society in the Faculty of Law at Humboldt University Berlin. She studied law and Islamic studies at the universities of Bonn, Birzeit/Ramallah, London (SOAS), Berlin (HU), Harvard, and Damascus. She was a doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt/Main. She clerked at the Court of Appeals in Berlin, held a postdoc position at the Eric Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Helsinki University, Finland, and was an Early Career Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen Institute for Advance Study. She also taught as Junior Faculty at the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy from 2014-2018. Her current work focuses on religion, race and gender in law.