"Träum weiter" (Keep Dreaming): Experiences in the partnership between the King's Brazil Institute and the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin

The partnership between the KBI and the IAI was launched in March 2025 (read more about it). In September 2025, the first KBI student participated in the IAI colloquium. This blog article is to present this experience in three parts: the resources, the structure, and the process of doing research at the IAI.

The resources

My name is Luiza and I am a Joint International Relations PhD Candidate at the KBI and at the Institute of International Relations of the University of São Paulo. The topic of my research is community responses to health emergencies in the Global South, and how some of them were crossed by a phenomenon called philanthrocapitalism – the emergent type of philanthropy and a big player in the field of Global Health. My main case study is the response to the COVID-19 emergency constructed by G10 Favelas – a group of the ten largest favelas in Brazil. I was the first student to participate in the partnership between the KBI and IAI in September 2025.

I spent one week at the IAI and I read books, articles, and biographies from their Library on favelas, COVID-19, favelas’ news agencies, and decoloniality. On Thursday, I presented my project and what I learned from the archives in the IAI colloquium. On Friday, I already had several new insights on my case study. I also knew more about subaltern visions on citizenship by consumption, which I have learned with my colleagues during the colloquium. Back in London, and then in São Paulo, I still have access to the IAI’s online archives, and they are incredibly updated.

The structure

The Institute is built around the Library. There, you can ask for books online, with your researcher card, and collect them physically at the desk in front of you around 30 minutes later. If the materials that you requested are in the warehouse, you can have them by next day. You can sit at one of the tables in the Library, and you can read non-stop. You are likely to have company until 10pm, as the Library receives visitors from Latin America, Germany, and many other places. You can see many other people being welcomed to study, to do research, to talk with others in a quiet way – in Spanish, English, Portuguese, or German.

The reason why my research topics are important in this blog is because, despite a my background in International Relations, I study small-local-communities, that in terms of actions end up being not small at all, but they remain understudied-archived-read: communities, favelas, community organisation, and community health. Therefore, having a big Library (and one warehouse) full of resources on these topics, and in so many others, is something that we need to cheer.

The process of doing research

The pandemic has shown us all the benefits of home offices (and they are so many), but it has also separated us and emptied corridors at universities. Now, the challenge of making research a collective and healthier enterprise is also linked with the challenge of being with others again. I think this requires something that I read in an exhibition about the 90s in Berlin: “träum weiter” (keep dreaming).

Reading physical books, making notes and changes in the drafts after reading those books. Looking around and seeing book aisles and tables full of people. People doing research and talking quietly about research and about life. To discuss your research and theirs in a big table in a colloquium (in Spanish, Portuguese, or English)…I think this is how research should look like, and this is how it can look like in some places, as in the IAI (or in the PhD office at King’s Brazil Institute, for example).

When I delivered my report on my time at the IAI to Professor Andreza Aruska, director of the KBI, she ended her comments with a beautiful insight: “perhaps the path is in fact the finish line?”. [In Portuguese, “finish line” is “linha de chegada” and refers more to the places where we want to arrive, and less to where we want to finish. As I see research as something alive, this idea of “arrival line” fits much better here]. The reason for this phrase to come out was that we could not avoid talking about the process of doing research. Being with others can help everyone to develop their ideas in a healthier way, and enjoy the city, a much needed experience after the experience of social isolation.

The path can be the finish line. And not only the path inside the libraries and rooms in which we do our research, but also the city in which we are doing it. The city, the leaves, the interesting things to see from the bus window, can also provide us a good company. This is even more precious if you are a young researcher in times of social isolation, or if, because of your gender, you are not allowed to experience all places of cities. In this sense, if I can recommend some things to the next researchers in this partnership visit to Berlin, it is: enjoy the process, take the bus, look at the people, the street art, the street protests; eat sandwiches, spinat-feta strudels, streuselkuchen (“cuca” in Gaúcho Portuguese); spend some free hours in museums, but also in supermarkets and parks; and get a 1€ coin for your locker at the IAI. I think our research can benefit from the archives, from the talks, and especially, from a process in which we do research about humans whilst experiencing being human – with others, in a welcoming environment, and not just with our PDFs and data sheets.