Elena von Ohlen

Following longer stays at universities in Chile and Mexico as a student, the
DAAD-Stiftung enabled me to realise my first research stay during my doctorate studies at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia in early 2020. In my interdisciplinary project for my doctoral thesis, I explore representations of violence against women in contemporary Latin American literature, and it was therefore absolutely necessary for me to do research locally and to establish contacts, especially in the area of legal studies.

While my home organisation for my doctorate in Berlin is a philological institute, my stay in Bogotá was an opportunity for me to do research at a legal studies institute and to benefit from exchange with experts in this field. The research and the legislation, and the related administration of justice in cases of violence against women are very progressive in Latin America by global comparison, and are subject to public debate beyond the academic sphere. The term femicide, for example, that refers to murder of a woman for gender-related reasons, and that plays a key role in my research, is rather unknown in Germany, while it is considered a separate offence in most Latin American countries. Academic contacts and resources from the regions whose literature I deal with in my research are a key component of my project, not least because I hope that my doctoral thesis will make a lasting contribution to fighting and preventing violence against women.

The Universidad de los Andes is among the most prestigious universities of Latin America and therefore has excellent facilities. In addition to regular participation in the research colloquium of doctoral candidates from the legal studies department, I was able to attend a range of different classes that allowed me to identify various and sometimes very unexpected connecting points to my doctoral thesis.

The outstanding infrastructure of the university enabled me to use many different workplaces. My favourite working space was the one provided for doctoral candidates by the legal studies department: a full storey with more than 20 workstations each with its own computer, and there was also a coffee maker and water dispenser. Here I got in touch with different doctoral candidates every day and I was always able to ask questions, if I hit the limits of my legal knowledge as a literary scholar.

My local supervisor, the legal expert Professor Jorge González Jácome, whose own work is also dedicated to the interface between law and literature, also got me in contact with the neighbouring Universidad del Rosario, the workplace of some of the most prominent researchers in the field of gender-specific violence. Alongside fundamental findings for my work, this contact has already given rise to cooperation in a number of cases, including a joint lecture scheduled for early 2021 in the context of a digital lecture series, and a publication that is also scheduled for 2021.

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View of Bogotá

Also beyond my research, I was able to get an insight into a demographically and historically complex city that is home to numerous museums, a mix of modern and post-medieval architecture, countless big and small higher education institutions, frequent sudden thunderstorms and excellent coffee that is available on every street corner. I am still struggling to understand, how Bogotá with its population of more than seven million people can ‘function’ without an underground network. And this is the case despite the fact that I lived right by the campus, on the 25th floor of a modern hall of residence for students from whose panoramic windows I tried to analyse the rhythm of the city day by day. On one of our trips with the TransMilenio bus, a friend from Bogotá explained it like this: there is a place for everyone in Bogotá, but it can take years to find it. And not everybody is privileged enough to search for it.

While Bogotá remains a mystery to me, the city has opened up various new perspectives for me and I hope to return. The only part I was not able to complete was the archive work that was scheduled for the last three weeks of my stay. The Covid-19 pandemic got in the way here. My current plan is to do digital research once the local authorities have resumed regular operations, and hopefully I will be able to answer at least some of my open questions this way. The shift to digitised teaching and research was handled quickly and efficiently at the Universidad de los Andes. While libraries were closed much sooner than was the case in Germany, I was able to submit some digitisation requests even after I had left, and these were processed just as swiftly.

When it became clear that I would not be able to leave the country for much longer, and after consulting with the German embassy, the DAAD and Freie Universität Berlin,
I decided to leave early in mid-March. Airports closed just a few days later and a lockdown was imposed in Bogotá. The fact that Colombia is now affected so badly by the pandemic, despite taking measures to contain it early on, is yet another expression of global inequality. This is also an insight we should definitely gain from a stay abroad like this, especially in times of a global health crisis.

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Despite of her premature return, Elena von Ohlen was able to discover the region

Beyond this, my stay at the Universidad de los Andes confirmed the expression I had had in the past, when I visited other Latin American universities: the flatter hierarchies in academia give rise to a very pleasant study, working and research atmosphere on the whole. Despite the fact that the pressure to perform and the required study efforts are much greater than at German universities in my opinion, these open university structures and open-minded lecturers, the vast majority of which are strongly dedicated to teaching, give rise to an extremely high quality of studies and respectful treatment of each other. My personal impression is that this is true not only for private universities such as the Universidad de los Andes, but also for the biggest public higher education institution Universidad Nacional de Colombia that continues to be considered the best university of the country for many disciplines.

My stay at the Universidad de los Andes, which was sadly cut short by the pandemic, was the perfect opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange. I was able to establish both personal and academic contacts that will last beyond my stay, and I made a big step towards adding the necessary legal background to my doctoral thesis. I am immensely grateful to the DAAD Foundation, as my stay in Bogotá has already had an enormous positive impact on my doctoral project and my academic career. I could not have achieved this without the Gustav Schübeck Scholarship.