Nelly Y. Pinkrah
Scientific Associate
NameNelly Y. Pinkrah M.A.
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Nelly Y. Pinkrah is a Black and media studies scholar, currently scientific associate at Technical University of Dresden. Her work explores Black studies, media and technology, poetics and politics, and critical pedagogies. Her doctoral thesis explores «The Technological Everyday» through Édouard Glissant in relation to language and technology, history, epistemology, and cybernetics.
With her colleague Michelle Pfeifer Nelly co-runs the project «School of (Un)Thought» which is part of the international network ASchool. She is also part of the speakers’ circle of the Alliance for Critical Scholarship in Solidarity (KriSol), a member of the commission «Media, Education, Digitization» of the German Society for Media Studies as well as the DFG Network «Gender, Media, Affect» and the German Forum Antiracism Media Studies (FAM). She is affiliated with the Center for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University where she is an alumna of the research training group «Cultures of Critique». In 2021, she lectured at the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen, from 2018-2019 she was a doctoral fellow at the Global Emergent Media Lab at Concordia University, Montréal.
- digital media and technology & history of technology
- black studies, black feminist theory & methods
- gender studies
- critical pedagogy & practice
07/25 speaker/participant: AIR, Aspen Art Museum, USA
06/25 talk/keynote: launch of Are you 4 real?
05/25 speaker/moderator: «Umweltrassismus und atmosphärische Gerechtigkeit», Deutsches Hygiene Museum (DHMD)
Dissertation project «Édouard Glissant & Cybernetics. Histories, Technologies, Practices of Being»
«The Trouble with Visibility», with Ramon Amaro and Tiara Roxanne, moderation: Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
This event is part of the series Decolonizing Technology in cooperation with the Department of Media Theory of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Inaugural Forum of the Austrian Media Studies Research School «For and Against Method«, Presentation of ZfM Issue 26: X | Kein Lagebericht, together with Ömer Alkin & Jiré Emine Gözen
«Rivers Solomon and Obaro Ejimiwe: A Sounding Out», in conversation with Nelly Y. Pinkrah and Alison Sperling
An event as part of the conference «Rethinking Relations: Michelle Serres and the Environmental Humanities» (organized by Moritz Ingwersen and Beate Ochsner)
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2025: «Calculating Intelligence,» in: Stella Rollin, Eva Fischer, Jamila Grandits (eds.), coded manoeuvres, Cologne: Walther und Franz König).
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2024): «After Opacity. A Turn Towards Langauge, Again», in: Clara Herrmann, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Maya Indira Ganesh (eds.): AI Anarchies, Berlin: Akademie der Künste.
Eric Otieno Sumba im Gespräch mit Doreen Mende und Nelly Y. Pinkrah (2023): «Die lange Geschichte des Schwarzen Sterns», Berlin: Archive Books.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023): «‹Do anything now› – Grenzüberschreitung am Limit», in Tuschling, Anna / Sudmann, Andreas / Dotzler, Bernhard J. (Hrsg.): ChatGPT und andere «Quatschmaschinen»: Gespräche mit Künstlicher Intelligenz, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023): «On Revital Cohen’s and Tuur van Balen’s ‹Trapped in the Dram of the Other› and ‹Retour›», in: Levin, Boaz / Schönegg, Kahtrin: Image Ecology, Berlin: Spector Books/C/O Berlin Foundation.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023): «A Library of the Now», in: Schirn Kunsthalle «A Space of Empathy: JOHN AKOMFRAH».
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023) : «Homeless at Home. Kritik der Dekolonisierung», in: Wolff, Rosa / Zybok, Oliver: KUNSTFORUM International «Heimat. Über ein Ambivalentes Gefühl», Bd. 291, S. 86-91.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023): «Editor’s Note on ‹mobility› drop», in: Against Catastrophe ‹mobility› drop.URL: https://againstcatastrophe.net/mobility
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2023): «All that is solid melts into flow», in: Against Catastrophe mobilitydrop.URL: https://againstcatastrophe.net/mobilit
Alkin, Ömer / Gözen, Jiré Emine / Pinkrah, Nelly Y, 2022: »Einleitung«, in: dies. (eds.): »X | Kein Lagebericht«. Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaften (ZfM), Heft 26 (in print).
Bruder, Johannes / Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2022: »McLuhan unter Palmen. Über Orte des Denkens, Sprechens und Handeln«, in: Alkin, Ömer / Gözen, Jiré Emine / Pinkrah, Nelly Y (eds.): »X | Kein Lagebericht«. Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaften (ZfM), Heft 26 (in print).
Uta M. Reindl / Ellen Wagner (eds.), 2022: »Seeing through Clouds. Ein Gespräch mit Fancis Hunger und Nelly Y. Pinkrah«, in: KUNSTFORUM International, Titel: Zukunftsressource Archiv – Kunst als Medium von Erinnerung und Imagination, Bd. 280, p.44-53.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2021: »Im Schutz der Baumkronen«, in: DIE EPILOG. Zeitschrift zur Gegenwartskunst – Hold On. Thema Kraft, No. 10.
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2021: »Das Digitale ist alt«, in: Dossier Dekolonisierung des Digitalen, Gunda-Werner-Institut Feminismus und Geschlechterdemokratie, 11.02.2021
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2021: »The Digital has been around for a while«, in: Dossier Decolonizing the Digital, Gunda-Werner-Institut Feminism und Gender Democracy, 11.02.2021
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2020: »A Matter of Time…and other Things that cannot be determined«, featured in: ARE YOU FOR REAL?, 10.2020
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2020: »In Conversation with Nina Chanel Abney. Catering to the Imaginary for a Real World«,in: Contemporary And (C&) Magazine, 29.10.2020
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2020: »The Digital has been around for a while«, in: C& Print Issue #11: Conscious Codes, Anyone?, Berlin: Contemporary And (C&), p. 20-22
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2020: »Programmierte Ungleichheit «, in: neues Deutschland, 14.02.2020
Pinkrah, Nelly Y., 2019: »Weaving Fabrics«, in: Busch, Benjamin / Sandoval, Lorenzo (eds.): The Endotic Reader N.1, Berlin: The Institute for Endotic Research Press, p. 58-65
Pinkrah, Nelly Y.: »Mein Paradies in Chemnitz«, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 02.09.2018
Pinkrah, Nelly Y.: »How Germany is in Denial of its Historical Racism today«, C& Center for Unfinished Business, 13.09.2018
Pinkrah, Nelly Y.,2018: »Looking for Opacity«, in: Research Values, A Peer-reviewed Newspaper About_, print
Pinkrah, Nelly Y. (2016): »A Case for Media Infrastructures – A comment on Activism in Landscapes«, in: Spheres. Journal for Digital Cultures, (3), 1-3
| 1/24-12/24 | Diversity und Anreiz Fond der TU Dresden für «School of (Un)Thought» |
| 12/21 | Stanford Leuphana Winter Academy: »Media of Organization« (online) |
| 08/21 |
IfK (International Research Center for Cultural Studies) Summer Academy, Vienna |
| 2018-2019 | Doctoral Fellow at Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab, Concordia University |
| 07/17 | Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab Summer Institute |
| since 2016 | Humanity in Action Senior Fellow |
| 2016 | M.A. with Distinction (Top 5%), Leuphana University Lueneburg |
03-04/25 translation: «Bass: On Color, Light, and the Complex Musics of the Middle Passage for» by Tina M. Campt (Bass: «Über Farbe, Licht und die komplexen Musiken der Middle Passage»), for reader «Steve McQueen: Bass Revisited», Schaulager Basel, Dia Art Foundation, Laurenz Stiftung
02/25 translation: «To be Looted»/«Ausgeraubt» by Tayla Myree, edition: Angewandte 12/24. Wien: Residenz Verlag.
02/25 talk: «On words and worlds», Conference tacticts&practice #16 «Are you a software update?» by Aksioma, Institute for Contemporary Art at Kino Šiška, Ljubljana
01/25 talk: «The distance between us. On violence, split technology, and Relation», Miriam-Makeba-Auditorium, transmediale festival 2025 «(near) near but –– far», House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin
01/25 workshop facilitation: «ASchhol x transmediale», transmediale festival 2025 «(near) near but –– far», Silent Green Kulturquartier, Berlin
11/24 panel moderation: «Technopoetics», panelists: DeForrest Brown, Margarida Mendes, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, symposium «In Terms of Media», Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures, University for Applied Arts, Vienna
10/24 keynote: «Echoes, tenfold. Violence, Technology, Progress», MESH Festival, FHNW Basel
10/24 conversation and talk: «Calculating Intelligence» with Paul Feigelfeld, CIVA Festival, Vienna
07/24 panel talk: «On finding a «capacity to speak». Language, technology, liberation.», panel: «Digital and Racial Capitalism», 4S/EASST, Amsterdam
06/24 talk: «‹Exceeding all measure›. On Édouard Glissants Relation and Computation», conference «Relation and Computation», organized by Ulrike Bergermann and Irina Raskin, HBK Braunschweig
06/24 talk: «On Opacity», workshop «Beyond explainability», organized by Goda Klombyte, University of Kassel
05/24 panel moderation: «Was macht KI mit Kunst?», panelists: Vanessa Opoku, Alexander Schubert, Dorotha Winter, m.bassy Hamburg
03/24 talk: «Technology that we Represent. Why Rethinking Technology and its Histories is Constitutive», Conference «That which protects the diverse», curated by Zach Blas for Rietveld Academie/Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
02/24 network launch: ASchool, with partners Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures (University for Applied Arts Vienna), Critical Media Lab Basel (FHNW Basel), transmediale festival, House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin
panel: «Quilting in Real Time», panelists: Louis Chude-Sokei, Svitlana Matviyenko, Helen Starr
panel: «Final Conversation», panelists: Alexandra Anikina, Rachel Dwyer , Nóra Ó Murchú, Jussi Parikka, Alex Quicho, Dubrovka Sekulić, Helen Starr
09/23 panel: «quantification, population, control», together with Orit Halpern, Michelle Pfeifer, annual conference of Society for Media Studies (GfM), Halle
05/23 organization workshop, «Listening In, Sounding Out. Resonances of Future Pasts», TU Dresden, May 6-7, together with Michelle Pfeifer
04/23 panel: book launch «Bürgerliche Kälte» (Henrike Kohpeiß), panelists: Sambojang Ceesay, Henrike Kohpeiß, Daniel Loick, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Lotte Warnsholdt, Volksbühne Berlin
02/23 – 03/24 advisory board member, exhibition «VEB Museum», Hygiene Museum Dresden (DHMD)
11/22 Autum School: «AIAnarchies», Panel with Heba Amin
10/22 organization international conference, «Any|One Day the Future has died. Impossible Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence», HGB Leipzig, October 27-29, together with Katrin Köppert, Francesca Schmidt, Pinar Tuczu
06/22 Interview for Dlf Kultur (Deutschlandfunk Kultur): Vera Linß. «Digitaler Kolonialismus. Wie künstliche Intelligenz koloniale Strukturen fortführt.», 28.7.2022
| 2022 | jury member for the new funding line »Rassismuskritische Bildung stärken!« for the German Federal Agency for Civic Education |
| 2022 | guest lecture, Seminar »Race-Design-Technology« by Johannes Bruder, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) |
| 07/21 – 09/21 | workshop organization: »Auftaktworkshop: Antirassistische Arbeit an der Institution Universität – von FAM und EOTO e.V.«, Annual Conference oft he German Society for Media Studies (GfM) |
| 06/21 – N.N. | Steering Committee FAM (Forum Antiracism Media Studies) |
| 02/21 | panel book launch: «On the Myth of neutral Algorithms«, book: Netzpolitik: Eine feministische Einführung, together with Francesca Schmidt (author), Chris Köver, Anana Antonakis |
| 01/21 | workshop facilitation »Digital Social Justice« for: Goethe-Institute, online |
| 01/21 | panel: »Ecofeminism«, Institut Française Berlin, together with Nadira Hussain, Julia Cren, moderation: Liberty Adrien, Fitz Habekuß |
| 12/20 – 01/21 | Jury Member for the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2021, together with Anita Jóri and Nora O Murchú |
| 12/20 | talk: »Futures of Algorithms/Algorithmic Futures«, online event, Gunda-Werner-Institute, Feminism and Gender Democracy at the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation |
| 12/20 | talk: »What you see is what you get. Critical thoughts on the Digital«, online event, German Federal Cultural Foundation |
| 01/20 | response, panel: »next to devastation«, panelists: Bernard Stiegler, Olga Gurionova, Matthew Fuller, 2nd respondent: Luiza Prado de O. Martins, transmediale festival, House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin |
| 12/19 | talk, »Édouard Glissant and Cybernetics«, doctoral colloquium Jan Slaby, Free University Berlin |
| 06/19 | talk, »For those of us who live at the shoreline«, Summer Fellowship Program, Humanity in Action Berlin |
| 06/19 |
talk: »Glissant, the boat, and the architecture of thinking«, workshop on Édouard Glissant and Architecture, House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin |
| 2019 | project coordination: Beyes, T, Pias, C (Ed.) 2019: Oxford Handbook for Media, Technology and Organization Studies, Oxford University Press |
| 12/18 – 07/19 | organization of the inaugural Stanford Leuphana Summer Academy 2019: »Presentism« |
| 03/18 | talk: »Weaving Fabrics«, Workshop: Thresholdings: Intimacies, Opacities, Embodiments, McGill University Montreal |
| 06/18 | panel chair »Critique and the Digital«, panelists: Mark Hansen, Antoinette Rouvroy, Leuphana University, Lueneburg |
| 09/17 – 06/18 | member of conference steering committee, »Critical Stances«, Leuphana University, Lueneburg |
| 05/17 – 11/17 | workshop organization »Post-X Politics«, Leuphana University Lueneburg |
| 2017 | project coordination/copyediting: Pias, C 2017, Computer Game Worlds, Chicago: Chicago University Press |
| 02/18 | panel chair/moderation, »The Weaponization of Language«, panelists: Sybille Krämer, Faisal Devji, Nick Thurston, transmediale festival, House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin |
| 02/18 | talk »Looking for opacity«, transmediale festival, panel RESEARCH VALUE, Haus of the Cultures of the World, Berlin |
| 01/18 | Ph.D. workshop, »Research Values«, Cooperation by Aarhus University, ZEM Potsdam and transmediale |
| 11/17 | panel chair, panelists: Heba Amin, Diana McCarty, Marc Steinberg, Workshop »Post-X Politics«, Leuphana University Lueneburg |
| 10/17 | panel chair »Media of Assistance. Accessability and Digital Cultures «, panelists: Wolfgang Hagen, Karin Harrasser, Jan Müggenburg, Claus Pias, GfM-Annual Conference 2017: »Zugänge«, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg |
| 06/17 | talk »Thinking through Opacity«, symposium »Privacy by Design. Surveillance, Self, Control«, HFBK Braunschweig |
| 04/16 | talk »Transparency/Opacity«, workshop organized by LAVITS – Latin American Network for Surveillance, Technology and Society, Institute for Communication and Image, Student Union of the University of Chile, Santiago de Chile |
| 02/16 | comment on Elizabeth Loshs talk on »Survival of Tools/Survival Tools«, panel: »Panic Room Sessions: Post-Digital Anxiety« together with Heba Y. Amin, Elizabeth Losh, Bani Brusadin, Nishant Shah, Brian Holmes, David Garcia, Eric Kluitenberg (among others), moderated by Diana McCarty and Clemens Apprich, House of the Cultures of the World, Berlin |
| since 2022 | Research Assistant, Technische Universität Dresden |
| 2021 |
Lecturer, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands |
| 2021 |
Ph.D. candidate and spokesperson (10/16-02/18), DFG Research Training Group »Cultures of Critique« (KDK), Leuphana University Lueneburg |
| 2018-2019 | Doctoral Fellow, Global Emergent Media Lab, Concordia University, Montreal |
| since 2018 | Associated Center for Digital Cultures (CDC), Leuphana University |
| 2016 | Master of Arts (with distinction) in Cultural Studies – Culture, Arts and Media at Leuphana University, Lueneburg |
| 2012 | Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology, African Studies and Sociology at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz |