Post-colonial and post-national socialist perspectives on racism in Austria

Why is it so difficult for us in Austria to recognize racism, to address it and to discuss it (self-)critically? This lecture discusses postcolonial and post-Nazi perspectives on racism as a structural challenge in Austria. The lecture will be held in German.

Prof. PD Mag. Dr. Farid Hafez, M.Sc. is currently a visiting professor of International Studies at Williams University (class of 1955). He has also been a non-resident researcher with Georgetown University's The Bridge Initiative since 2017. Previously, he was a senior researcher at the University of Salzburg from 2014 to 2021. In 2017, he was a Fulbright-Botstiber Visiting Professor of Austrian American Studies at the Centre for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2014, he was a visiting scholar at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, New York. Since 2010, Hafez has been the founding editor of the Islamophobia Studies Yearbook and, since 2015, co-editor of the annual European Islamophobia Report. He received the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Political Book of the Year for his anthology Islamophobia in Austria (co-edited with John Bunzl, 2009) and has published more than 100 books and scholarly articles. Since 2020, Hafez has also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Austrian-American History (Pennsylvania State University Press). Hafez has taught and written on race, far-right politics in Europe, Muslim minorities, and political thought. His most recent books include the monograph Feindbild Islam. Zur Salonfähigkeit von Rassismus (2019, Böhlau) and the anthology Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies (with Enes Bayrakli, 2019 Routledge). Forthcoming is Coloniality, Race, and Islam: The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror (with Naved Bakali, Manchester University Press). E-mail: fh6@williams.edu