Sinthujan Varatharajah is a political geographer and essayist who has done extensive research on questions of statelessness, spatial politics, and geographies of power. In 2017-2018, they were a member of the European Commission’s inaugural European Migrant Advisory Board. Varatharajah’s exhibition “how to move an ark” (“wie man* eine arche bewegt”) was part of the 11th Berlin Biennale for contemporary art in 2020. Just recently, Varatharajah and the artist Moshtari Hilal initiated a public debate about people with a “Nazi-background”, questioning historical continuities in German society. Their urgent intervention was awarded with the promotion prize of the Lessing-Award for Critique. Their first book “an alle orte, die hinter uns liegen” (“to all places that lie behind us”) will be published in September.