Prof. Dr. Taoufik Ben Amor is a senior fellow at EXC 2020 in Research Area 3: "Future Perfect" (07/2024). He is a professor of Arabic studies at Columbia University with a profound expertise in Arab music. He is also an active musician and leads the Arab Music Ensemble at Columbia.

Through the study of recordings of North Africa prisoners of WWI housed in the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Taoufik Ben Amor's current project "Listening to the Past" delves into questions of forced migration and the temporality and atemporality of the colonial archive. 

Illustrated with sample pieces, the presentation sets the context of these recordings and examines the question of how we listen to them today.