KAAD Annual Academy
Each year, the KAAD Annual Academy brings together guests from academia, politics and society with KAAD scholarship holders and alumni to discuss topics that matter to the global KAAD network.
39th Annual Academy, 11 to 14 June 2026, BonnSelf-Portraits and Boundaries: In Search of Belonging in a World in Crisis
The world is marked by profound crises, including climate change, political instability, wars and global inequality. In this situation the question becomes all the more urgent: Who am I? Where do I belong? Belonging can be a source of strength: in family and neighbourhood relationships, in communities of solidarity and in civic engagement. Wherever people show mutual respect, take responsibility for one another and create spaces of trust, real belonging emerges.
Yet the answer to the question of belonging is increasingly defined by exclusion. Authoritarian movements are gaining strength, and fears of migration, cultural change or resource scarcity are exploited for political ends. New, exclusive images of identity emerge, often accompanied by patriarchal and nationalist thinking, and social media gives them enormous reach.
The consequences of colonialism and cultural dominance still have an impact today. Indigenous communities in particular are fighting in many places for the recognition of their identity, their history and their habitat.
With representatives from academia, politics and society from some fifty countries, the 39th KAAD Annual Academy reflected on self-perceptions and mechanisms of exclusion from a global perspective, to identify critical developments and work out possible solutions.
Programme
The academy combined specialist group meetings, keynote lectures, five forums on political, indigenous, social, cultural and digital perspectives on belonging, a barcamp, a festive evening with the KAAD Foundation's Peter Hünermann Prize and an international soirée organised by the scholarship holders' regional groups.
