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"I am grateful to be able to move and think freely"

[Translate to Englisch:] Prof. Dr. Miriam Lay Brander und Dr. Laura Febres de Ayala

In the past, Venezuela used to be a prosperous country, but for years, the state is stuck in a deep economic crisis, and 80 percent of the population is considered poor. Behind a democratic façade lies an autocracy with repressive methods. A quarter of the population has left the country in the past ten years, according to the German Foreign Office. This includes the literary scholar and historian Dr. Laura Febres de Ayala, who has found a new academic home at the KU.

Her journey from Caracas to Eichstätt is characterized by her expertise, the support of various colleagues and a specific support program: As a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Philipp Schwartz Initiative for Endangered Scholars, Febres was able to conduct research at the KU from 2021. In addition, she also received funding from the Free State of Bavaria. The Venezuelan did not rest on her laurels: Together with Prof. Dr. Miriam Lay Brander, holder of the Chair of Romance Literary Studies II and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (ZILAS), she successfully submitted a funding application for a project to the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2024. The 72-year-old will be researching the literary representation of migration in novels and short stories from a gender perspective until 2027. The focus is on Venezuelan women writers who have emigrated to other Latin American countries. A group whose background Febres also shares.

"It is impossible to be apolitical in literature"

The renowned expert in Latin American literature and history decided to leave her home country partly due to the massive restrictions on her freedom of research and teaching. Laura Febres de Ayala was already involved with feminist publications and literature on migration in Venezuela. "It is impossible to be apolitical in literature. And I've always said what I think", she says. However, such topics are frowned upon by the government – not least because it wants to distance itself decisively from the so-called Western world order. "Diversity is just lip service; there is an athmosphere of exclusion", describes Febres.

In addition, everyday life became increasingly dangerous. Crimes, the black market and smuggling are normal in Venezuela, where almost half the population is unemployed and an estimated one third of young children suffer from malnutrition. Febres remembers: "On my four-hour daily commute to the Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, I didn't know whether I would be robbed by a thief, as happened to several of my students and colleagues. Often, you could hear gunshots." The precarious economic situation not only means that libraries remain closed, but also that private livelihoods are threatened. Laura Febres, for example, knows of a professor who died of hunger.

Caracas
City view of the Venezuelan capital Caracas

After initially working as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Spanish University of Alcalá, she contacted the Center for Latin American Studies at the KU. Its director, Miriam Lay Brander, immediately agreed to act as a mentor for Febres as part of a Philipp Schwartz Fellowship. "I myself benefit from her many years of experience from a different academic environment, including methodologically", says Professor Lay Brander. She praises the great support the application received from the International Office, the Research Service Center and the KU's Human Resources Department as well as from the authorities. "The Philipp Schwartz Initiative is a great opportunity for researchers to find a way out of difficult circumstances in their countries of origin", says Lay Brander. Dr. Laura Febres, is grateful for the opportunity to move and think freely. "I see this as a special privilege!"

Academic focus on topics related to feminism and migration

At the KU, she took up her academic interests in feminism and migration and initially devoted herself to analyzing novels by women who migrated from Latin America or Spain to European countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Febres' historical interest resonates here, as history also emerges from the overall view of individual experiences. The unifying element of the novels she has selected is writing as a measure for self-help. Many of the authors mix their personal experiences with fictional elements and reflect on their own migration experience. With this project, Febres broke new academic ground, because until then, literary and social science had only fragmentarily analyzed the voices of women in emigration novels of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In the DFG-funded project "Space, time and gender in the narrative literature of Venezuelan migrant women in 21st century Latin America", which is now starting, Febres is building on this work. The project examines narrative texts by Venezuelan women writers who have migrated to other Latin American countries, including their personal, economic, cultural and literary networks. Febres and Lay Brander want to show what role the gender variable plays in the decision to migrate, the experience of crossing the border and integration into the host society, as well as with regard to options for action for migrant women. They are also concerned with the question of the extent to which the experience of being "in-between" different worlds is dealt with in the works examined. In contrast to previous migration research, the focus is not only on the spatial dimension, but also on the temporal dimension – for example, how views of the past determine migrant women's ideas about the future. The project thus not only focuses on the literary work of Venezuelan women authors, but also on the diverse migration experiences of Venezuelan women.

For Venezuelan Dr. Laura Febres, her own migration experience with this DFG-funded project is currently more than positive: At the KU, she has not only found a new place to work, but also a new academic home.

On the Philipp Schwartz Initiative

The Philipp Schwartz Initiative is named after the pathologist Philipp Schwartz. After the National Socialists seized power, the scientist, who came from a Jewish family, was dismissed from his university position without notice in 1933. He fled to Switzerland, where he founded the "Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad" in the same year. The aim of the association was to find jobs abroad for persecuted researchers. Since 2016, the Philipp Schwartz Initiative has enabled German universities and research institutions to accept foreign academics who are at risk of war or persecution in their home countries. Further information can be found on the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s website.

 

 

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