News 2025

The Viadrina welcomes twelve doctoral students who will begin to work on their dissertations on Ukraine in June 2025 as part of the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies Frankfurt (Oder) - Berlin (KIU).

The renowned labour law expert Prof. Dr Judith Fudge from the McMaster University in Canada is a visiting professor at the Viadrina until the end of May. In a workshop on Global Supply Chains and Modern Slavery Governance before the end of her stay, she spoke about the impact of import bans on products from forced labour and why wishful thinking does not necessarily adress the situation of the concerned workers.

To complete their postgraduate Master's degree in "Schutz Europäischer Kulturgüter" (SEK), students travelled to Romania from 8 to 16 April 2025 to learn more about the cultural heritage of the Transylvanian Saxons. The study trip focussed on the characteristic churches typical of the region.

Quality control in steelworks, stress in studies and diversity in marketing - analysing large amounts of data brings added value in very different fields. Students were able to see this for themselves in the "Data Science & Decision Support" project seminar run by Prof Dr Charlotte Köhler in the winter semester 2024/25. They worked on real data and problems in three groups and learnt a lot about time management and group work along the way.

On 28 March 2025, the conference "Haltung zeigen?! Diversity Discourses and Conflict Management", which was organised by the Mediation and Conflict Management master's degree programme, focused, among other things on the realities of social diversity. The conference opened with presentations by Dr. Max Czollek, Kübra Gümüşay and Dr. Thomas Lux, before participants were able to discuss, reflect and exchange ideas in various workshops.

How do you resolve social conflicts in a country that is at war? How do you facilitate dialogue within society and what role does religion play in the cohesion of societies? Sociologist Dr. Tetiana Kalenychenko has been working on these questions for a long time and is deepening her research during her KIU scholarship at the Viadrina.

In the summer semester 2025, Ukrainian journalist and media scholar Dr Nataliia Steblyna will be teaching at the Viadrina. As part of the first guest professorship at the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies (KIU), she will hold seminars on digital media analysis, Russian propaganda and communication in times of war. In the Interview she talks about her career, the special situation of her university, which has migrated from eastern Ukraine, and what she expects from Viadrina students.

Numerous Ukraine experts from the Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies (VCPU) and the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies (KIU) were represented at the roundtable discussions at Café Kyiv on 11 March 2025 in Berlin. Among other things, the panelists talked about the role of science in the reconstruction of Ukraine, discussed these with colleagues and exchanged ideas with other actors from politics, science and culture who work in and research about Ukraine.

On 14 March 2025, Arite Stemmermann has been awarded the prize of the East Brandenburg Wirtschaftsjunioren for her final thesis on the role of different generations in start-up companies. A total of four Viadrina alumni presented their works as part of the "Night of Young Businesses".

On 14 March 2025, a ceremony was held in Poznań to award the medal "For services to the Adam Mickiewicz University" to Prof. Dr Carmen Thiele. The holder of the Professorship of International Law, Eastern European Law and Comparative Law was honoured for her many years of academic and educational cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz University, in particular with the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice.

Maksym Butkevych spent almost two years and four months in Russian captivity before he was released in a prisoner exchange in October 2024. On 5 March 2025, the Ukrainian journalist and human rights activist spoke about his experiences at the event ‘Ukraine's struggle for freedom, justice, human rights and the future of Europe’. The evening at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities was organised by the Competence Network for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies (KIU) in cooperation with the Allianz Ukrainischer Organisationen and the Zentrum Liberale Moderne.

24 February 2025 marks the third anniversary of Russia's attack on Ukraine. For the past three years, Ukrainians have not only been at war, but also living under martial law. During his KIU fellowship at Viadrina, Ukrainian law professor Prof Dr Viktor Muraviov is investigating how this restricts the fundamental rights of the population and whether the rule of law can still be upheld.

How can moral emotions divide and unite in politics? This is the focus of the joint project "Moral Emotions in Politics - How They Unite, How They Divide" (MORES). As a first result, film scholar Dr Thomas Scherer, who is coordinating the project at the Viadrina, has now published an article on European television series that provide populist answers to the crisis of political representation. In the interview, he talks about what the series heroes have over real politics, how anger fuels political careers and why populism could be good for democracy.

How can freely available sources such as social media posts, satellite images, media reports and Google Street View data be used to research pressing socio-political issues? Two seminars at the European New School (ENS) addressed this question in the winter semester 2024/25. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr Miglė Bareikytė and Dr Silvan Pollozek, students used special research methods to investigate war and migration issues.

The remuneration of music creators in the streaming sector as well as transparency, diversity and market power - these points are the focus of the final report by the Digital Culture Research Network, which is co-led by Viadrina economist Prof Dr Jana Costas. Together with Prof. Dr Patrick Vonderau (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), she published the study "Remuneration in the German market for music streaming" on 11 February 2025. The final report includes a legal opinion by Viadrina scholar Prof Dr Philipp Hacker.

Viadrina students Tom Sauer and Awanish Srivastava took part in the International Student Conference (ISC) at the Universitas Katolik Parahyangan (UNPAR) in Indonesia from 20 to 25 January 2025. Following the motto "Empower the Youth, Shape the Future", they exchanged ideas with other international students and, at the end, took on the roles of politicians from the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as part of a model general assembly in Jakarta.

While the war in their home country continues, 20 Ukrainian academics are currently executing their research projects at the Viadrina and elsewhere, funded by the scholarship programme of the KIU Competence Network for Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies. One of them is Prof Dr Tetyana Panchenko, who has been researching Ukrainian refugees in Germany for the last three years. She is interested in what ideas they had when they came to Germany, how they are integrating and whether they can imagine returning to Ukraine.

The Brazilian linguist Anderson Lucas Macedo has written an award-winning dissertation on language variation in Cape Town, South Africa, at the Viadrina and his home university, the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in Rio de Janeiro. For his work, which was supervised at the Viadrina by Prof Dr Konstanze Jungbluth, he has now received the prize for the best dissertation of 2024 from his university. He will be a guest at the Viadrina again at the end of January.