Miriam Friz Trzeciak is a sociologist and research assistant at the Department of Interculturality at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. His teaching and research interests lie in the areas of critical migration and border regime research, queer theory, de- and postcolonial studies, postsocialist studies, qualitative research and activist/dialogical research practice. He is active in the group Cottbus Postcolonial and Postsocialist as well as in the Initiative Cottbus '92. Both groups critically examine the colonial heritage of the city against the background of the GDR past; they are also concerned with a remembrance policy reappraisal of the racist pogroms that were perpetrated in August 1992 against the residents of a refugee shelter in the Cottbus district of Sachsendorf.